Bioengineered microbes in disease therapy

Naturally occurring microorganisms have been used therapeutically for over a century, but the advent of modern techniques for genetic manipulation has created unprecedented opportunities to develop novel bioengineered microbes with high therapeutic efficacy. Engineered bacteria can be tailored to deliver drugs, therapeutic proteins, and gene therapy vectors with great efficiency, and with a higher degree of site-specificity than conventional administration regimes. Moreover, they provide new opportunities to interfere with critical steps in disease pathogenesis. In this review, we present a cross-section of recent work on the development of bacterial-mediated treatments for inflammatory disorders, infectious diseases, and cancer. These treatments have the potential to significantly impact global morbidity and mortality if successfully translated from the laboratory into the clinic.