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Audio Interview

Decoy-resistant IL18: how engineered E. coli enhances immune responses against tumors

Published on February 26, 2026   13 min

A selection of talks on Oncology

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Interviewer: Dr. Rizwan Romee, you and your colleagues at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute recently published a paper in Nature Biotechnology, introducing a novel immunotherapeutic system that is effective in treatment-resistant solid tumors. What is particularly interesting here is that this is a system that is based on live non-pathogenic E. coli. So, to set the scene, can you start by providing some background information on the way in which the tumor microenvironment hinders the effectiveness of traditional cancer therapies, and how this study aims to overcome those challenges? Dr. Romee: Thank you, Eyal, for asking this question. The tumor microenvironment is one of the biggest challenges in cancer immunotherapy in general. It's almost across the board that multiple types of cancer have this highly immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, which leads to dysfunction of immune effector cells. There are multiple factors involved in this dysfunction, including, first of all, the trafficking of immune cells into the tumor microenvironment. So the tumor microenvironment vasculature is structured in such a way that it does not favor trafficking or migration of immune cells from the blood to the tumor microenvironment. That's number 1. Number 2, once the cells are in, if they make it, then they get dysfunctional, and that dysfunction is mediated by several factors, including things like TGFβ, prostaglandins, low pH mediated by higher levels of lactate, and also low oxygen, which we also call hypoxemia.

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Decoy-resistant IL18: how engineered E. coli enhances immune responses against tumors

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