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Revision as of 09:50, 19 October 2017

Cancer kills over 8 million people every year. That's the entire population of Switzerland!

We need more specific therapies because current approaches result in many side-effects. That's why we invented CATE, the first all-in-one living cancer therapeutic with an integrated two-step safety mechanism. That's why we created CATE: Cancer-Targeting E. coli.

A living cure to a living disease.

Background
CATE consists of the non-pathogenic bacterium E. coli Nissle that has the intrinsic ability to home specifically in tumors.

It features two safety checkpoint mechanisms to ensure only tumor cells are damaged.

Description
CATE is administered intravenously, travels through the blood and colonizes tumors. If enough bacteria have gathered at the tumor, they make themselves visible and prepare a payload. A doctor can then control the site with an MRI and activate release of the cancer-killing payload.

Treatment
To achieve all these novel functions, we designed a genetic circuit that is distributed over two de novo synthesized DNA molecules. All functions were tested and optimized to make the resulting circuit as safe and well characterized as possible.

Circuit