US EditionStudy: Soil-Borne Bacteria Can Treat Cancer — and More Health Headlines
Researchers engineered Clostridium sporogenes with an oxygen-tolerance gene and quorum sensing to target tumor edges, enabling safer, more effective cancer treatment.
- Yesterday, University of Waterloo engineers reported that bacteria can colonize and consume tumor cores, with Dr. Aucoin stating, `Bacteria spores enter the tumor, finding an environment where there are lots of nutrients and no oxygen, which this organism prefers, and so it starts eating those nutrients and growing in size.`
- Key to the problem, the core of many solid tumors lacks oxygen and hosts dead cells, creating an oxygen-free and nutrient-rich niche ideal for Clostridium sporogenes, but bacteria die at the tumor outer edge exposed to oxygen.
- Using quorum sensing, researchers ensured the oxygen-tolerance gene activates only after bacteria accumulate, confirmed by GFP tests, as Dr. Brian Ingalls said, `Using synthetic biology, we built something like an electrical circuit, but instead of wires we used pieces of DNA`.
- Researchers now plan to combine both genetic systems and advance to pre-clinical tumour testing, a project begun by PhD student Bahram Zargar under Dr. Pu Chen with CREM Co Labs and Dr. Sara Sadr.
- Building on a 2023 study demonstrating oxygen-tolerance modification, the approach controls timing to prevent unsafe growth in the bloodstream, reflecting Waterloo's interdisciplinary health-innovation effort.
11 Articles
11 Articles
Study: Soil-borne bacteria can treat cancer — and more health headlines
Study: Soil-borne bacteria can treat cancer Sending bacteria into tumors to eat them before they grow. That's the novel plan university of waterloo scientists hatched in an effort to beat cancer. They engineered a bacteria, commonly found in soil, to consume tumors from the inside out. By devouring the cancer, the bacteria heals patients. When [...]
Engineered bacteria can consume tumors from the inside out
A research team led by the University of Waterloo is developing a novel tool to treat cancer by engineering hungry bacteria to literally eat tumors from the inside out. "Bacteria spores enter the tumor, finding an environment where there are lots of nutrients and no oxygen, which this organism prefers, and so it starts eating those nutrients and growing in size," said Dr. Marc Aucoin, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo. "So, we are now…
Beating cancer by eating cancer
A research team led by the University of Waterloo is developing a novel tool to treat cancer by engineering hungry bacteria to literally eat tumours from the inside out. Bacteria spores enter the tumour, finding an environment where there are lots of nutrients and no oxygen, which this organism prefers, and so it starts eating those nutrients and growing in size.
Science Daily
ecotopical.comScientists engineer bacteria to eat cancer tumors from the inside out
Researchers are engineering bacteria to invade tumors and consume them from the inside. Because tumor cores lack oxygen, they’re the perfect breeding ground for these microbes. The team added a genetic tweak that helps the bacteria survive longer near oxygen-exposed edges — but only once enough of them are present to trigger the change. It’s a carefully programmed biological attack that could one day offer a new way to destroy cancer.
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