A research team from East China Normal University in Shanghai has developed an engineered oral-deliverable, glucose-sensing and functional response probiotic (GIFT) living drug for "sense-and-respond"-based control of blood glucose in people with diabetes, marking a novel approach to diabetes treatment.

The research was conducted by a team from the university's School of Life Sciences, and the findings were published in the journal Nature on Aug 12.

Using synthetic biology techniques, the research team engineered a probiotic with a century-long safety record into an "intelligent virtual organ" that can be taken orally and temporarily reside in the intestine.

It can sense blood glucose fluctuations in real time and autonomously secrete glucose-lowering hormones, enabling therapeutic dosing in response to real-time blood glucose levels and providing a programmable, orally deliverable sense-and-respond platform for metabolic therapy without transplantation.

This approach shifts diabetes blood glucose management from the traditional passive model of injections and medication to a new paradigm of oral delivery and autonomous regulation, enabling true on-demand drug delivery and physiological-level closed-loop control.

Diabetes has become a major chronic metabolic disease that threatens public health worldwide. According to the latest statistics from the International Diabetes Federation, the number of adults with diabetes worldwide has exceeded 530 million and is projected to surpass 850 million by 2050. China has approximately 120 million people with diabetes.

GIFT would offer hundreds of millions of people with diabetes worldwide a Chinese approach that is safer, gentler, and more in tune with the body's natural instincts, thereby marking China's position at the forefront of the global field of smart-living drugs and precision treatment for metabolic diseases.

"GIFT offers a novel approach to precise blood glucose management in diabetes by coupling glucose sensing with on-demand GLP-1 secretion. It represents a significant advance in the field of engineered probiotic living drugs," said Ye Haifeng, the paper’s corresponding author and a professor at East China Normal University’s School of Life Sciences.

He added that compared to mammalian cell-based therapies, oral probiotics can avoid the complexities and immunogenicity risks associated with transplantation. Compared to engineered bacteria that constitutively express GLP-1, GIFT offers superior stability, druggability, and safety.

Source: China Daily