Professor Shannon Sirk (MME) received the NIH NIBIB R21 Trailblazer Award for her ongoing work in engineering both microbes and antibodies for human therapies. This three-year, $400,000 award is designed to help engineers pursue research programs at the interface of the life sciences, engineering, and physical sciences.

Zubin Havewala and Garrett McPheron have been selected for the Carl R. Woese Undergraduate Research Scholar Program. They will carry out research projects over a 10-week period over the summer. The students will be supported by a stipend from the IGB and the goal is to inspire them to pursue important scientific questions.

Technological advancements over the past few decades have laid the groundwork for the use of microbe-based drugs to treat diseases. Bioengineering professor Shannon Sirk (MME) and her lab are engineering human commensal microbes into living therapeutics, delivering therapeutic proteins directly in the body, to make these drugs more accessible. 

An Illinois research team is developing a method of producing and delivering monoclonal antibody treatments for breast cancer through commensal microbes in the gut. If successful, this approach could increase accessibility and dramatically decrease the cost of monoclonal antibodies.