Delivering beneficial bacteria to the GI tract
The human digestive tract contains trillions of bacteria, many of which help digest food and fight off harmful bacteria. Recent studies have shown that some of these bacteria may influence, for better or worse, human diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. As scientists have learned more about these bacteria, many have raised the possibility that manipulating these populations, known collectively as the microbiome, could improve human health. Looking toward that future, a team of MIT scientists has developed a strategy for delivering large numbers of beneficial bacterial to the human gut. “Once the microbiome is better understood, we can use this delivery platform to target certain areas and introduce certain species there,” says Ana Jaklenec, a research scientist at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and one of the senior authors of a paper describing this approach in the Sept. 12 issue of the journal Advanced Materials. Jaklenec and colleagues developed...