{"id":210605,"date":"2025-04-05T02:15:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-05T07:15:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/designer-bacteria-for-cancer-therapy"},"modified":"2025-04-05T02:15:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-05T07:15:03","slug":"designer-bacteria-for-cancer-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/designer-bacteria-for-cancer-therapy","title":{"rendered":"Designer bacteria for cancer therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/designer-bacteria-for-cancer-therapy.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In this study, researchers engineered an attenuated strain, Designer Bacteria 1 (DB1), which efficiently survives and proliferates in tumor tissues while being cleared in normal tissues, achieving a remarkable \u201ctumor-targeting\u201d effect as well as \u201ctumor-clearing\u201d effect.<\/p>\n<p>To understand how DB1 simultaneously achieves these effects, researchers investigated the interactions between the bacteria and tumors. They discovered that DB1\u2019s antitumor efficacy is closely linked to tissue-resident memory (TRM) CD8+ T cells within the tumor, which are reinvigorated and expanded following DB1 therapy. Interleukin-10 (IL-10) plays a crucial role in mediating this effect, with efficacy depending on the high expression of interleukin-10 receptor (IL-10R) on CD8+ TRM cells.<\/p>\n<p>To investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying the high expression of IL-10R on CD8+ TRM cells, researchers conducted a series of computational and quantitative experiments. They found that IL-10 binds to IL-10R on CD8+ TRM cells, activating the STAT3 protein and further promoting IL-10R expression. This established a positive feedback loop, enabling cells to bind more IL-10 and creating a nonlinear hysteretic effect, whereby CD8+ TRM cells \u201cmemorize\u201d previous IL-10 stimulation during tumorigenesis. The high expression of IL-10R on CD8+ TRM cells was exploited by a bacteria-induced IL-10 surge, which activated and expanded CD8+ TRM cells to clear tumor cells.<\/p>\n<p>To examine the source of IL-10 within the tumor microenvironment (TME) after bacterial therapy, researchers found that tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) upregulate IL-10 expression following DB1 stimulation via the Toll-like Receptor 4 (TLR4) signaling pathway. Interestingly, IL-10 reduced the migration speed of tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs), aiding DB1 in evading rapid clearance. These processes depended on high IL-10R expression in tumor-associated immune cells, highlighting the critical role of IL-10R hysteresis.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>A research team elucidated the mechanism behind bacterial cancer therapy using a genetically engineered bacterial strain. Their findings were published in <i>Cell<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>Exploring the use of antitumor bacteria in cancer therapy dates back to the 1860s. Despite this long history, however, clinical application of bacterial-based cancer therapy has faced significant challenges in terms of safety and efficacy.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/designer-bacteria-for-cancer-therapy\">Continue reading \u201cDesigner bacteria for cancer therapy\u201d | &gt;<\/a><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this study, researchers engineered an attenuated strain, Designer Bacteria 1 (DB1), which efficiently survives and proliferates in tumor tissues while being cleared in normal tissues, achieving a remarkable \u201ctumor-targeting\u201d effect as well as \u201ctumor-clearing\u201d effect. To understand how DB1 simultaneously achieves these effects, researchers investigated the interactions between the bacteria and tumors. They discovered [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,1523,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}