Engineered bacteria can consume tumors from the inside out

phys.org

3 pointsPaulHoule2 comments

A novel idea. Once the tumour is gone, I'm curious as to whether any of the C. sporogenes byproducts would be toxic if they were to get into the blood stream (or maybe they'll be in low-enough quantities to not be a problem...)

I almost linked to the linked paper but was afraid people would miss out on the application.

Bacteria aren't entirely singled-celled organisms, in real life they extend their cell walls to form larger biofilms and using quorum sensing to manage their population. The point of the paper was that you could hack that quorum sensing to make them really go to town inside a tumor.

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