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Tal Danino:
Programming bacteria to detect cancer (and maybe treat it)

TED2015 · 4:11 · Filmed Mar 2015 
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Liver cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to detect, but synthetic biologist Tal Danino had a left-field thought: What if we could create a probiotic, edible bacteria that was "programmed" to find liver tumors? His insight exploits something we're just beginning to understand about bacteria: their power of quorum sensing, or doing something together once they reach critical mass. Danino, a TED Fellow, explains how quorum sensing works — and how clever bacteria working together could someday change cancer treatment.

Tal Danino
Synthetic biologist
Tal Danino explores the emerging frontier of combining biology and engineering (and art). He is a 2015 TED Fellow. Full bio
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
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19 comments
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Peter Chiavetta
Posted a day ago
Scary to say the least. A Sci-fi movie when the experiment goes out of control and the creator is destroyed by their child creation. Why don't we work on our environment and stop the carcinogens that snap our chromosomes.


Nattering Nabob
Posted a day ago
What part of the talk are you referring to? Did you view the entire talk? Carcinogens in the environment is a different topic that was not discussed here.


Peter Chiavetta
Posted 19 hours ago
In reply to:
What part of the talk are you referring to? Did you view the entire talk? Carcinogens in the environment is a different topic that was not discussed here.
Nattering Nabob
Nattering, My statement is vague. My apologies. My reference is to the science reacting to a problem caused by the environment. Example being China's cancer rates have sky rocketed since their industrial revolution. Pollution has run ram-pit. Hence, reverse pollution and cancer rates will reverse. This new science with bacteria possibly targeting cancer cells has hopes of treating cancers that can have been avoided by a cleaner environment.

HL

Henry Scott Lin
Posted 2 days ago
it is a novel idea. Yes, the difficulty in treating cancer is detacting it. But I doubt that how could the programme bacterium be safe to human, as we know pathogen or viral has the characteristic of variation.


JB

Jayant Barve
Posted 3 days ago
The article is interesting. It provides for newer, innovative, effective & cheaper dimensions to the medical treatments. Tomorrow there could be some Nobel Prize winning study in this field.

There are of course two sides of the coin and little pondering sends chill in back-bone. This is and is not necessarily, a negative thinking. When first use of chemical to kill harmful germs/insects/pests was found, chemical bombs came in use. When oil was explored to run industries and transport, napalm and petrol bombs came as enemy of humanity. When the man realized he can fly with petrol, war-planes & machines were created in huge number. The mechanical, chemical and biological warfare are found as better use of innovations since ages. This may also be seen in the opinion by Ryan Christman above and rightly so. What we see as the latest weapons on TV channels are actually invented and used at least 10 to 25 years ago or more. 

So we can just wish that wiser counsel prevails on mankind for its true progress. Demons are at work over time to see pre-mature end of earth and the mankind under the false dream of survival of few of its creed.


RC

Ryan Christman
Posted 3 days ago
Very interesting stuff - and a worthy goal. I sure hope we can anticipate the potential domino effect; with any kind of programming, bugs can go unnoticed -- and have devastating effects. I imagine this is especially true in systems that we may not entirely understand (living organisms) and even more so when used inside of another living organism (you).
I also wonder how accurate the detection results are/will be. Perhaps some level of cancer is normal / benign, and these tests will cause undue panic. Certainly there could be ways to get around this, but I can imagine the temptations for the medical industry to take an 'extra cautious' approach to reading the the results and use this as a way to cause panic (read: increase profits).
Unfortunately, with almost any new technology, it's just a matter of time before it's abused for financial and political purposes, whether a medical finance tool like the one mentioned above, or as a new theme for biological weapons. I can imagine programming bacteria to assault vital organs, or even mind control which is completely realistic - you'll understand if you've watched Ed Yong's TED talk about parasitic bugs (for example).
That said, I'm not trying to be all doom and gloom - like I said, it's a worthy goal, and no doubt some good can and probably will come from this. I'm just trying to paint another perspective.

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