Engineered Bacteria Could One Day Save Your Life From Cancer

The earlier you detect the presence of cancer, the better your chances are that treatments will work to completely eradicate it. That’s why researchers are constantly looking for better ways to make early detection of tumors possible. According to a new paper published in Science on Thursday, now there’s one more tool to add to this arsenal: genetically engineered bacteria.

That’s probably not the most comforting string of words to put together, but it could be a gamechanger. Called CATCH (short for “Cellular Assay for Targeted CRISPR-discriminated Horizontal gene transfer”), the new tool could be a game changer in identifying DNA sequences and mutations associated with intestinal cancers.

“As we started on this project four years ago, we weren’t even sure if using bacteria as a sensor for mammalian DNA was even possible,” Jeff Hasty, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego who led the new study, said in a statement. “The detection of gastrointestinal cancers and precancerous lesions is an attractive clinical opportunity to apply this invention.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.