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 bacter...