In the guts of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), adenosine triphosphate (ATP) produced outside of cells leads to intestinal inflammation. Francisco Quintana, an immunologist and neurologist at MIT’s Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues engineered an inflammation-sensing yeast probiotic that neutralizes the inflammatory molecule.
In mouse models of IBD, the probiotic performed as well as or better than standard therapies for IBD. The approach could work to mitigate inflammation not only in the gut, but also in other parts of the body, such as the central nervous system.
“It’s a brilliant study, very original,” said Ari Waisman, a molecular biologist at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, who was not involved in the new research. “The idea alone deserves 10 points just for that.”
In IBD, a vicious back-and-forth between host immune cells and gut flora ramp up inflammation. Patients with IBD carry an abundance of microbial ...
