Development of Oncotropic Bacteria for Detection and Immunotherapy of Cancer

There is an established a wealth of knowledge about which genes become faulty in patients who develop cancer. However, as these genes are often required by our healthy cells, they cannot be targeted with drugs delivered to the whole body without unpleasant side effects. To overcome this, there is a need to develop ways to deliver drugs much more precisely, directly to the cancer. This would minimise damage to healthy tissues and open a range of new ways to treat the main tumour, as well as any smaller tumours which have spread to other parts of the body.

To that end, we have engineered bacteria that can survive inside tumour cells but not healthy cells, making them safe and easily controllable with antibiotics. These bacteria make for a very specific cancer treatment, because our immune system is very good at killing the bacterially infected cancer cells.

Building on this, we have now developed bacteria that can also deliver drugs to target a patient’s faulty gene.

If we can demonstrate that this approach works against human tumour cells in the laboratory, we can begin to take steps to develop this approach for the detection and treatment of many common cancer types.