A yeast-based oral therapeutic delivers immune checkpoint inhibitors to reduce intestinal tumor burden

Engineered probiotics are an emerging platform for in situ delivery of therapeutics to the gut. Herein, we developed an orally administered, yeast-based therapeutic delivery system to deliver next-generation immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) proteins directly to gastrointestinal tumors. We engineered Saccharomyces cerevisiae var. boulardii (Sb), a probiotic yeast with high genetic tractability and innate anticancer activity, to secrete "miniature" antibody variants that target programmed death ligand 1 (Sb_haPD-1). When tested in an ICI-refractory colorectal cancer (CRC) mouse model, Sb_haPD-1 significantly reduced intestinal tumor burden and resulted in significant shifts to the immune cell profile and microbiome composition. This oral therapeutic platform is modular and highly customizable, opening new avenues of targeted drug delivery that can be applied to treat a myriad of gastrointestinal malignancies.