Re-Engineered Bacteria Takes Aim at Diarrheal Disease

Call them stool soldiers. How researchers are endowing a strain of Escherichia coli bacteria with diarrheal-fighting capabilities.

We all know how common and deadly diarrheal diseases are. What if would take an engineered form of Escherichia coli primed to target disease-causing pathogens in the gut the way antibodies seek out and inactivate a virus? 

Researchers from Northeastern and Tufts universities in Massachusetts engineered the probiotic with tiny antibodies from alpacas, which have antibody domains that are simplistic versions of the antibodies that exist in humans. Then they immunized the alpacas with virulence factors from multiple strains of E. coli that cause diarrhea and screened the resulting nanobodies for the ones that bound the pathogens best.

To read more about this experiment, check out the story in Drug Discovery News.