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Bacteria deliver the goods

  1. M. Teresa Villanueva
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Bacteria can be engineered to effectively deliver therapeutics in specific tissues, including tumours. Two articles have now described different approaches to improve the design and efficacy of engineered therapeutic bacteria in cancer. Tal Danino and colleagues have designed a tunable system to reduce the toxicity of immunogenic bacteria, whereas Claudia Gravekamp and colleagues have designed bacteria that can deliver immunogenic antigens to the tumour, making it more susceptible to host immune attack. Both approaches were efficient in inhibiting tumour growth in mouse models of cancer.

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Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 21, 336 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41573-022-00065-7

References

  1. Harimoto, T. et al. A programmable encapsulation system improves delivery of therapeutic bacteria in mice. Nat. Biotechnol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01244-y (2022)

  2. Selvanesan, B. C. et al. Listeria delivers tetanus toxoid protein to pancreatic tumors and induces cancer cell death in mice. Sci. Transl Med. 14, eabc1600 (2022)

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