BioCentury
ARTICLE | Translation in Brief

Bacteria with a pulse

Self-regulating bacteria deliver pulses of therapeutic proteins in vivo

September 1, 2016 7:00 AM UTC

A UCSD-led team has programmed bacteria to deliver controlled pulses of therapeutic proteinsin vivo,and is spinning out Gencirq LLC to commercialize the technology. In a study in Nature, the orally delivered bacteria produced tumor-killing or immune-stimulating proteins in a mouse model of metastatic cancer, placing the bugs at the crossroads of synthetic biology, microbial therapeutics and cancer immunotherapy.

Jeff Hasty, the principal investigator, told BioCentury co-culture experiments by others had established proof of principle for using bacteria to deliver therapeutics. "I think where our study goes a bit further is that we test the therapy in a fairly challenging model for liver metastasis," he said. ...