19th Adriano Buzzati-Traverso Lecture

Pavia, 11 aprile 2023, ore 17,00.

Aula Collegio A. Volta, Via A. Ferrata 17, 27100 Pavia.

Luis Serrano Pubul – Centre for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona

“Engineering a bacterium for lung therapy”

Engineering bacteria for treating human diseases presents new opportunities in therapeutics.
Although lung diseases are among the top causes for mortality worldwide, there is no treatment for them based on a live biotherapeutic. We have engineered a genome-reduced human lung bacterium, Mycoplasma pneumoniae (MPN), as a novel treatment for lung diseases encompassing infections, fibrosis and cancer. We found that expression of biologicals by engineered MPN has a limited physiological impact in mice due to its low expression capacity. To solve these issues, we use our protein design software FoldX and ModelX to increase the effective expression in MPN, and the activity in mouse lungs. This rational design strategy of combining synthetic biology with protein design is quite powerful to foster bacterial therapy.

La Fondazione ringrazia il Collegio A. Volta per l’ospitalità, http://www.collegiovolta.org/