Treating cancer with Salmonella
Using a bacterial treatment to shrink tumours and extend patients’ life spans.
You might think that giving Salmonella to a cancer patient is a really bad idea. But Alex Incledion (BSc 2017, MSc 2019, Biosciences 2021-) is developing bacteria to reveal cancerous tumours and activate the immune system in order to treat and remove cancer.
Fundraisers and donors are helping cancer researchers try new ideas and generate scalable data that can lead to bigger things. By giving towards ‘seedcorn funding’, which lets researchers follow a hunch or explore a new idea before applying for more substantial grants, you are helping to unlock new targets for cancer research and new opportunities for treatment.
One recipient of this funding was Alexander Incledion (BSc 2017, MSc 2019, Biosciences 2021-). As well as being a keen anatomy teacher in Cardiff University’s School of Biosciences, Alex’s research background is in tissue engineering. Now he’s applying his experience to doctoral research into the use of infection as a treatment for cancer.
“I am researching how a specially developed strain of Salmonella bacteria might be used to treat cancerous tumours.
“Many cancer therapies in use today are often costly, have limited applicability based on cancer type, and are less targeted than their namesake suggests.
“You see, cancer cells often evade the immune system, equipping themselves with proteins like PD-L1 which falsely inform the body’s immune cells that the cancer belongs where it is - like how a lanyard indicates belonging at an event or a location. The PD-L1 is the lanyard and allows the cancer to hide in plain sight.
“We have developed a strain of Salmonella bacteria with the ability to switch off this evasive gene in cancer cells, taking away that security lanyard, and exposing them to the body's immune cells.”
Alex has been researching how to enable the immune system to do its job, to help it to detect the cancer and fight it. By using bacteria, he is simultaneously able expose the cancer and alert the body’s immune system to the threat.
“You might be thinking that giving a cancer patient food poisoning doesn’t sound like the best idea. But we are able to modify the genetic makeup of the bacteria, taking the ‘fangs’ off these bugs, as it were, so that they remove cancer cells with minimum side effects.
“Furthermore, the bacteria we use are ‘oncotropic’ which means that they can only thrive in cancer cells. In fact, they often lack the ability to survive away from the tumour microenvironment.
“When they enter the body, perhaps via a tablet or an injection, they head for the tumour, beginning to break down the cancer and stimulating the immune system in exactly the right places. The immune cells are then drawn to the bacteria and the tumour, clearing both at the same time.”
This research is applicable across cancer types and has enormous potential in the treatment of tumours. Alex is hopeful that it could move through the research timeline within years.
“This bacterial treatment is promising to shrink tumours and extend patients’ life spans. It has wide-reaching implications as it could be used to treat cancerous tumours all over the body. We hope that we might get this to clinical trial, even in the next 5 years.
“I’ve been able to do a pilot of this research, and now, thanks to donors, we’re generating more data and more nuanced answers to our questions.”
“When working with bacteria, £1000 can have an enormous impact. We can run a lot of experiments with the same resources and generate a huge amount of data. Thank you for your part in this exciting research.”
— Alexander Incledion (BSc 2017, MSc 2019, Biosciences 2021-)
Fundraisers and donors to cancer research are vital as scientists test new ideas which have the potential to change the landscape of research.
Thanks to you, projects like Alex’s can start, progress, and could – one day – change the impact of a cancer diagnosis.
