{"id":244367,"date":"2026-09-22T09:06:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/engineered-probiotic-bacteria-produce-cancer-drugs-inside-tumors"},"modified":"2026-09-22T09:06:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:06:51","slug":"engineered-probiotic-bacteria-produce-cancer-drugs-inside-tumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/engineered-probiotic-bacteria-produce-cancer-drugs-inside-tumors","title":{"rendered":"Engineered probiotic bacteria produce cancer drugs inside tumors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/engineered-probiotic-bacteria-produce-cancer-drugs-inside-tumors2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>E. coli in uncooked meat can cause diarrhea and food poisoning. Scientists, however, have found a way to turn the bacterium into a delivery agent that takes drugs straight to a tumor and transforms it into a tiny cancer drug dispensary.<\/p>\n<p>E. coli has a natural tendency to travel through the body and specifically colonize and grow inside tumor cores. A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/scitranslmed.ady2289\" target=\"_blank\">recent study<\/a> by researchers from Columbia University harnessed this trait and genetically engineered a probiotic strain of the bacterium to produce an enzyme called cytosine deaminase (CD) that anchors to tumor tissue. This allows it to convert 5-FC, a nontoxic prodrug that remains harmless in the body until activated, into 5-FU, a powerful cancer-killing chemotherapy drug, directly inside the tumor.<\/p>\n<p>The cancer-fighting abilities of the engineered bacteria didn\u2019t end there. The researchers also got the bacteria to co-produce two additional immune-modulating molecules directly inside the tumor microenvironment: an IL-15 superagonist and a PD-L1-blocking nanobody. One activates antitumor immune cells inside the tumor, while the other blocks PD-L1 signals that cancer cells use to hide from immune attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>E. coli in uncooked meat can cause diarrhea and food poisoning. Scientists, however, have found a way to turn the bacterium into a delivery agent that takes drugs straight to a tumor and transforms it into a tiny cancer drug dispensary. E. coli has a natural tendency to travel through the body and specifically colonize [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-244367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244367","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=244367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}