Engineered Bacterial Therapeutics: Controlled Release Approaches in Oncology

Engineered bacterial therapeutics are gaining attention in tumor therapy, showing significant clinical potential. However, their clinical translation requires stricter regulation of biosafety and targeting specificity. Controlled release systems offer a key strategy to optimize engineered bacteria through precise spatiotemporal gene expression and motility modulation. This review systematically evaluates two core controlled-release platforms in tumor treatment-tumor microenvironment-responsive systems and intelligent controllable systems-summarizes representative therapeutic paradigms and critically analyzes the merits and limitations of each. Therefore, this review aims to provide a theoretical foundation for refining controlled-release strategies in engineered bacteria-mediated antitumor therapy.