Back

A Synthetic Microbial Therapy Rewires Antitumor Immunity Across Multiple Cancer Types

Das, J. K.; Qin, Q.-M.; Singh, S.; James Thomas, C.; Gupta, S.; Chatterjee, A.; Sunnagatta Nagaraja, S.; Guo, F.; Delgado, K.; Kumar, A.; Ryu, E.; Flannagan, B.; Agca, C.; Agca, Y.; Powell, N.; Barry, E.; Kahl-Mcdonagh, M. M.; Chaki, S. P.; Mendes Ribeiro Correa, A.; Niyakan, S.; Han, S.; Cai, J.; Qian, X.; Kobayashi, K. S.; Han, A.; Jayaraman, A.; Ficht, T. A.; Adams, L. G.; Alaniz, R.; Yee, C.; Song, J.; de Figueiredo, P.

2026-07-22 immunology
10.64898/2026.07.19.735925 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Microbial immunotherapies show promise against cancer, yet broad efficacy and mechanistic insight remain elusive. Here, we introduce SPIKE 1.0 (S1.0), a metabolically engineered bacterium that converts tryptophan into immunomodulatory hydroxyindoles via tryptophan monooxygenase to remodel the tumor microenvironment (TME). A single systemic dose of S1.0 elicited potent, durable antitumor responses across multiple murine models, including humanized mice, with minimal toxicity. S1.0 enhanced inflammatory signaling, activated innate and adaptive immunity, and promoted T cell persistence, memory, and resistance to exhaustion. It outperformed checkpoint inhibitors and synergized with chemotherapy. Multi-omics profiling revealed that S1.0 rewired amino acid metabolism in tumor-infiltrating immune cells and disrupted immunosuppressive networks. These results establish S1.0 as a scalable, cost-effective microbial immunotherapy with broad translational potential for solid tumors.

Matching journals

The top 6 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.