Engineered bacteria can consume tumors from the inside out

Published in phys.org by University of Waterloo on February 24, 2026

edited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Robert Egan

Under a low magnification of 1.9X, this image depicts a close-up view of a Petri dish culture plate that contained a medium of egg yolk agar, which was inoculated with Clostridium sporogenes bacteria. These organisms gave rise to these colonies after a 48 hour incubation period. Zones of opacity were noted beneath these colonies. Credit: CDC, Public Domain

A research team led by the University of Waterloo is developing a novel tool to treat cancer by engineering hungry bacteria to literally eat tumors from the inside out. "Bacteria spores enter the tumor, finding an environment where there are lots of nutrients and no oxygen, which this organism prefers, and so it starts eating those nutrients and growing in size," said Dr. Marc Aucoin, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo. "So, we are now colonizing that central space, and the bacterium is essentially ridding the body of the tumor."

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