Genetically Encoded Biosafety in a Therapeutically Modified Organism for Obesity - Abstract / Summary
240 million Americans and 2 billion people worldwide are obese or overweight; this is a
major health concern, associated with heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Obesity has
proven difficult to treat, but engineered microbes show promise. E. coli engineered to
produce N-acyl phosphatidylethanolamines (NAPEs) resulted increased satiety,
decreased food intake, decreased body fat, and decreased insulin resistance in obese
mice. Unfortunately, lack of safety and containment measures in this organism precludes
its clinical evaluation and use in humans. A robust biosafety solution to address control
and containment concerns would unlock the therapeutic potential of this organism.
The optimal solution may be synthetic auxotrophs: organisms engineered to require
the presence of a complementing ligand (ligand). The principal investigator (Dr. Lopez)
demonstrated a method for generating synthetic auxotrophs based on a Synthetic
Ligand-Dependent Essential gene (SLiDE allele). SLiDE strains are an ideal biosafety
solution because they ensure engineered organisms can be “turned off” by removing the
ligand. They also prevent organisms from escaping into the environment by requiring
that organisms only grow where ligand is supplied. This will broadly enable the use of
therapeutic organisms by providing a versatile, reliable biosafety technology.
Incorporation of NAPE production into SLiDE biosafety strains will produce a therapeutic
organism with intrinsic biosafety, but the ligand-dependence of the SLiDE organism must
be altered to food-safe compounds for use in patients. This will be achieved by applying
directed evolution to force the SLiDE strain to control its viability with food-safe ligands
and ignore other compounds found in nature and the gut. The products of this Phase I
grant, NAPE-producing SLiDE strains that require food-safe ligands for continued
viability, would represent a critical step in developing an anti-obesity therapeutic
organism safe for use in patients. The combination of anti-obesity efficacy with the
unprecedented ability to prevent therapeutic organisms from escaping and turn off
therapy on demand would be a valuable achievement for engineered probiotics. The
most promising strains generated in this study will be ideal for further characterization in
vivo in Phase II, with an eye towards eventual clinical trials.
