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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 Oct 18.
Published in final edited form as: Science. 2022 Nov 24;378(6622):858–864. doi: 10.1126/science.add9667

Fig. 3. Engineering bacterial interactions with other modalities.

Fig. 3.

Bacteria can be used together with both living and nonliving technologies for improved diagnostic and therapeutic outcomes. Combinations with imaging techniques such as MRI, PET, and FUS enable tracking and visualization of systemically delivered bacteria. When bacteria are encoded with acoustic reporter genes or thermal switches, FUS can be used to activate therapeutic release. Drug-loaded nanoparticles can be physically bound to bacteria, which can traffic them to tumor depths that they otherwise would be unable to reach. Shifting from nonliving modalities, efforts have focused on engineering interactions between replicating or living modalities. For example, bacteria can remodel the TME, making it more favorable for oncolytic virus therapy. Synthetic consortia of bacteria can also work together to prompt predictable immune responses or limit populations of tumor-promoting bacteria. Finally, CAR-T cells can be activated by bacterial adjuvants and programmed to respond to bacterially released synthetic antigens.