We are pleased to announce that our latest peer-reviewed research article, “Construction and Functional Characterization of a Heterologous Quorum Sensing Circuit in Clostridium sporogenes,” has been officially published in ACS Synthetic Biology.
Full text: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acssynbio.5c00628
This work represents a significant milestone for CREM Co Labs. For the first time, we successfully engineered a functional, peptide-based quorum sensing (QS) system, originally from Staphylococcus aureus, into the obligate anaerobe Clostridium sporogenes, a leading candidate for tumor-targeted bacterial therapies.
Why This Breakthrough Matters
Our research demonstrates:
Successful integration of the agr QS operon from S. aureus into C. sporogenes, enabling density-dependent gene activation.
Precise control over gene expression, confirmed through LC-MS/MS quantification of AIP-III and GFP reporter kinetics.
Signal specificity and cross-inhibition, showing that C. sporogenes can discriminate between cognate and non-cognate AIPs, critical for multiplexed synthetic-biology control circuits.
Population-threshold activation behavior, allowing engineered bacteria to turn on therapeutic functions only when they reach sufficient density in targeted environments such as tumors.
Advancing CREM’s Bacteria-Mediated Cancer Therapy Platform
This publication establishes a foundational regulatory system that will allow future therapeutic C. sporogenes strains to:
Activate engineered therapeutic genes only inside the hypoxic tumor microenvironment,
Release anti-cancer payloads at controlled population thresholds, and
Improve safety, precision, and tumor specificity in next-generation oncolytic bacterial therapies.
This is a major step forward for CREM Co Labs’ long-term vision of intelligent, programmable microbial therapeutics.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge our co-authors Dr. Brian Ingalls, Dr. Marc Aucoin, and Dr. Sara Sadr from University of Waterloo, and we thank MITACS for supporting this research through a partnership with CREM Co Labs.