Trust your gut? Your doctor likely will, too. Probiotics engineered to sense and report signs of bowel inflammation could deliver firsthand knowledge of your system's inner workings -- provided they are not killed or dispersed in the process.
"For our proof-of-concept study, we chose inflammatory bowel disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes painful and recurrent inflammation flares," said Elena Musteata, a graduate student in systems, synthetic and physical biology in the Tabor lab."But gut health plays many important roles in the human body, affecting metabolism, immunity, brain function and other systems.
According to Musteata, a quicker diagnosis could lead to better patient outcomes:"Especially with IBD, it's very important to minimize the delay between symptom onset and treatment," she said."Having a way to assess gut health within a short amount of time and then take action could really generate a significant advance in the clinical management of chronic inflammation and other gut-related disorders.
"Our study demonstrated that encapsulating biosensor bacteria in protective alginate particles enables their robust survival and diagnostic function in live animals," Musteata said."We characterized the effect of encapsulation on the viability, population dynamics and performance of a thiosulfate-sensing bacterial strain previously developed in our lab."
While developing and optimizing the platform was a challenging process, the researchers stressed the necessity of ensuring its reproducibility as a prerequisite for eventual clinical use."As we worked on developing our platform, we encapsulated bacteria countless times, optimizing each step of the process along the way. There were so many aspects that needed to be characterized well in order to make a clinically translatable product," Aghlara-Fotovat said.
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