Bacteria shed light on tumours

Pictured: Dr Mark Tangney, Cork Cancer Research Centre, UCC.

Pictured: Dr Mark Tangney, Cork Cancer Research Centre, UCC.

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UCC scientists have developed new methods to monitor drug delivery to tumours by making bacteria luminescent.

 

One of the biggest problems in the development of cancer therapies has been the targeting of tumours for treatment while leaving healthy, normal cells untouched. A research team led by Dr Mark Tangney at the Cork Cancer Research Centre, (CCRC) at UCC believe that they have taken a key step in this area, using luminescent bacteria.

Bacteria have a natural ability to grow inside tumours, a fact that has been known for some time. In fact, when non-disease causing bacteria are injected intravenously, they ‘cosy up’ to tumours, but fail to gain a foothold anywhere else in the body. How or why bacteria prefer the company of tumours to healthy tissue remains something of a mystery.

Now, Dr Tangney and his team have figured out a way to track bacteria within tumours in real time, to learn more about what makes the tumour environment so attractive to these microbes. By specially engineering probiotic bacteria, like those found in many yoghurts, to produce luminescent light the team were able to monitor bacterial growth in tumours as it happened using three-dimensional bioluminescence imaging.

This scanning method revealed information about the number and location of the bacteria, to the level of precisely revealing where within the tumour the bacteria were living, providing much more information on the interaction of bacteria and tumours than was previously known. As an added bonus, imaging of the light coming from bacteria could be combined with other scanning methods (CT) providing details of their relationship with different parts of the tumour, such as the blood supply.

The study was performed by Dr Michelle Cronin, Dr Sara Collins and others from the CCRC, in collaboration with a US industrial partner, Perkin Elmer, a research team at the University of California Los Angeles and researchers at UCC’s department of microbiology.

“This is a perfect example of what can be achieved through international collaborations, particularly with industry”, commented Tangney. “We have forged close professional links with industry partners possessing facilities to develop the necessary technology and staff with expertise in different areas to ours. We have found multi-disciplinary approaches to research invaluable”.

The availability of this technology advances the potential for targeted cancer drug delivery. The team are now engineering bacteria to contain therapeutic agents that are produced specifically within the tumour for targeted treatment.

Aside from cancer, this technology also provides a method of monitoring bacteria in infectious disease settings.

The research was funded by the Health Research Board which has invested €1.2m in the CCRC to date and the charity Breakthrough Cancer Research.

Read more in the Irish Examiner: http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/scientists-develop-probiotic-to-target--214659.html

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