This New Cancer Breakthrough Sounds Impossible—Until You Hear How It Works

Using bacteria to attack cancer cells is not a new idea, but the Waterloo researchers have engineered a solution to one of the biggest challenges inherent to the method.

BY MARÍA JOSÉ GUTIERREZ CHAVEZ, EDITORIAL FELLOW

Scientists at the University of Waterloo are developing a new tool to battle cancer.

A recent paper published by Sara Sadr, Bahram Zargar, Marc G. Aucoin, Brian Ingalls in ACS Synthetic Biology describes how the team engineered bacteria, specifically Clostridium sporogenes, to enter solid tumors and eat them from within.

Using bacteria to attack cancer cells is not a new idea, but the Waterloo researchers have engineered a solution to one of the biggest challenges inherent to the method.

Before Chemo, We Had “Coley’s Toxins”

Starting in 1891, William B. Coley, who was head of the Bone Tumor Service at Memorial Hospital in New York—now Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital—injected more than 1000 cancer patients over several decades with different types of bacteria and bacteria byproducts over the course of several decades.

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He observed “excellent results, especially in bone and soft-tissue sarcomas,” according to a paper in the Iowa Orthopaedic Journal. The Cancer Research Institute notes that these so-called “Coley’s toxins” were used as cancer treatments at Memorial until 1955.

Today, chemotherapy and radiation are the mainstream treatments for cancer, but advances in bioengineering could flip that script.

Tumor-hunting bacteria are a “promising solution to overcome some of the challenges with traditional cancer therapies,” Dr. Christopher Johnston said in a blogpost for leading cancer research institution MD Anderson, adding that “[s]olid tumors, which account for the majority of adult cancers, can be notoriously treatment-resistant due to their complex microenvironment.”

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