Bacteria: The Surprising Tool In The Fight Against Cancer – And How Indaptus Is Taking It Further

For over a century, scientists have known that bacteria can help fight cancer, but harnessing it safely and effectively has remained elusive. Indaptus Therapeutics Inc. INDP, the next-generation immunotherapy cancer drug company, is aiming to change that. 

Using bacteria as a tool to fight cancer may sound like science fiction, but the concept has roots dating back to the 19th century. Scientists at the time noticed that certain cancer patients experienced tumor regression following bacterial infections. Building on this observation, Dr. William Coley, a surgeon at what is now Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, began treating patients with a mixture of heat-killed bacteria – later known as ‘Coley's toxins' – to stimulate the immune system and trigger anti-tumor responses.

That approach was replicated by many other doctors around the turn of the century, including the Mayo brothers – who created the Mayo Clinic – and Henry W. Meyerding, an orthopedic surgeon who achieved higher survival rates by combining bacteria with surgery compared to surgery alone for patients suffering from bone cancer. 

Why Bacteria To Fight Cancer, While Effective, Lost Its Luster 

But the approach, although effective, was eventually abandoned because Coley's mixture of bacteria wasn't easy to make or administer. Furthermore, radiation as a treatment method was just taking off and garnering a lot of attention in the medical community. 

Radiation had the backing of powerful people in the medical community, including James Ewing, who was the director of Memorial Hospital. Ewing thought radiation therapy should be the main treatment for all cancer patients. The introduction of chemotherapy in the 1940s pushed Coley's bacteria treatment further to the fringes, and it only began to get attention again with the advent of immunotherapies to fight cancer and other diseases. 

While surgery, radiation and chemotherapy are currently the main treatments to fight cancer, not every tissue infected with cancer can be removed by surgery. Plus, when using radiation and chemotherapy to fight cancer, it’s impossible for the agents to distinguish between healthy tissues and those with cancer. As a result, the approach of using the body's own immune system to fight cancer has gathered interest as researchers and biotechnologists have showcased the effectiveness of this approach. As it stands, several immunotherapy drugs are approved to fight cancer, and many more are in clinical trials. According to WebMD, 15% to 20% of cancer patients realize lasting results with immunotherapy. 

Indaptus' Sweet Spot 

This is where Indaptus comes in. Building on the observation that tumor growth can reverse in the presence of bacterial infections, the company has developed a proprietary platform that exploits bacteria's natural ability to activate both innate and adaptive cellular immune pathways. Leveraging its insight into the levels and ratio of activating signals necessary to elicit a broad immune response, the company is creating and advancing a pipeline of proprietary, attenuated and killed non-pathogenic gram-negative bacterial candidates designed to be widely accessible, with broad antitumor and antiviral activity. 

Known at the company as Decoy Therapeutics candidates, Indaptus says these candidates are unique in their ability to work with a variety of existing therapies, including checkpoint therapy and targeted antibodies, to produce strong anti-tumor responses against established tumors. What's more, the company says its Decoy Therapeutics are designed to be flushed out of the body within a few hours, reducing the potential for long-term toxicity. In humans, Indaptus says Decoy Therapeutics transiently activate more than 50 cytokines/chemokines that may work together in attacking tumors.

Take Decoy20 as one example. Decoy20 is the company's drug that employs engineered, non-pathogenic bacteria to activate the body's own immune defenses in the fight against cancer. In preclinical studies, the company has demonstrated the drug's ability to elicit single-agent activity and durable anti-tumor responses in the combination setting against colorectal, hepatocellular, pancreatic carcinoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in standard pre-clinical models.  

Trial Underway 

Decoy20 is currently in phase 1 trials with 20 patients enrolled in its weekly dosing cohort, which the company said is a key milestone for the trial. Initial data indicated that Decoy20 at the 30 million cell dose was generally well-tolerated, with a favorable safety profile and promising early signs of clinical benefit, including some patients demonstrating stable disease, reports Indaptus. What's more, the company said  Decoy20 triggered short-term increases in multiple key immune system biomarkers (cytokines and chemokines), which play a crucial role in activating the body's natural defenses against cancer.

"Immune cell movement – or trafficking to and from tissues, tumors and bone marrow – is critical for successful anti-tumor therapy. In our weekly dosing cohort, we have observed transient but broad movement of key immune cells that is consistent with the chemokine induction we previously reported," said Michael Newman, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Indaptus. "These findings further validate Decoy20's ability to modulate the immune system in a controlled and potentially meaningful way. We are encouraged by the consistency of these pharmacodynamic effects with each week of Decoy20 dosing and look forward to continuing to assess their impact on potential tumor response."

But it’s not just cancer that Indaptus is leveraging bacteria to fight. The company recently won patent approvals in China, Japan and Israel for the use of its Decoy bacteria compositions to fight the hepatitis B virus (HBV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The patents also extend to combination therapies with a variety of both approved and investigational treatments.

Coley seems to have been on to something at the turn of the century when he noticed bacteria could be used to fight cancer. While his research and treatment were largely forgotten for years, that’s no longer the case. Now companies, including Idaptus, are revisiting the historical observations and applying cutting-edge science to create treatments that could prove effective in fighting everything from cancer to HIV. With a phase 1 trial of Decoy20 underway, multi-dose monotherapy efficacy data expected in 2025 and proof of concept data expected in late 2025 or early 2026, Indaptus is an immunotherapy company to keep an eye on. To learn more about Decoy Therapeutics and Indaptus, click here. 

Featured image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

This post contains sponsored content. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be investing advice.