Bioengineered Probiotics for Ovarian Cancer Therapy 

Our vision is to create programmable “living medicines” that can detect, intercept, and treat cancer with unprecedented precision. We focus on engineering probiotics that selectively home to tumors, sense disease-specific signals, and locally deliver therapeutics directly within the tumor microenvironment. Ultimately, we hope to establish a new class of safe and broadly applicable microbial therapies that can improve outcomes for patients with ovarian cancer and extend beyond to other cancers.

Ovarian cancer remains one of the deadliest cancers affecting women because it is often discovered only after it has already spread and because many patients do not respond well to existing treatments. Current therapies are also only for certain groups of patients, highlighting the need for new treatment approaches that can work more broadly across ovarian cancer types. This project will develop engineered probiotic bacteria as a new type of “living medicine” that can naturally travel to ovarian tumors within the abdomen and release therapeutic payloads directly inside the tumor. By concentrating treatment precisely where it is needed, this approach aims to help the immune system better recognize and destroy cancer cells while reducing harmful side effects to healthy tissues. Our team has developed a next-generation probiotic strain designed to be substantially safer than earlier bacterial therapies while maintaining the ability to target tumors and improve survival in animal models of ovarian cancer. In this project, we will further improve this technology by testing additional therapeutic molecules, carefully evaluating safety and efficacy responses, and comparing our approach with existing cancer therapies. Our long-term goal is to create a safer, more effective, and widely applicable treatment platform for ovarian cancer and potentially other difficult-to-treat solid tumors.6Imageaddexpandmore-dots TypeSmallMediumLarge ImageAttach imageThe recommended minimum image size to upload is 3000px wide. Transparent background check

"We are developing a new class of therapies using engineered beneficial bacteria to detect and treat ovarian cancer in ways using synthetic biology. These bacteria can naturally colonize small tumors, locally deliver therapeutics, and stimulate the immune system directly within the tumor environment, with the goal of creating safer and more effective treatments for a broader range of patients."

Tal Danino is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. His lab focuses on engineering bacteria for biomedical applications, with a particular emphasis on developing bacteria as a cancer therapy. Tal received a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UCSD, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. He is the recipient of awards including the NSF CAREER Award, DOD Era of Hope Scholar Award, CRI Lloyd J Old STAR Award, Pershing Square Sohn Prize, CZI Biohub Investigator Award, and is an AIMBE and TED Fellow. He directs the Synthetic Biological Systems Laboratory and is a member of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and Data Science Institute at Columbia.