Bioengineered microbes in disease therapy

Abstract

The developments in biotechnology, genomics, proteomics, immunology, and metabolic engineering have provided with unprecedented applications of microbes to improve human health. Disease therapies are experimenting with new regimes to alleviate the problems of diseases. Bioengineered microbes present with ample opportunities to uniquely address the problem of ailments by increasing the length and breadth of the available options to tackle diseases. Microbial immunomodulation of the host, targeted killing of the tumor cells using microbes, and specific delivery of drugs into the host tissues are some of the examples of application of bioengineered microbes. Although history of the concept of possibility of using the microbes for tweaking the disease progression and therefore promoting human health is an old one, with recent research studies, the field has received a much needed impetus. In the future, the need is to establish more in vivo evidences for wide acceptance of therapies using bioengineered microbes as well as to demonstrate the extent of the possible horizontal transfer of such bioengineered genes in order to undertake its practical applications.