Engineered bacteria can sense the physiological environment in the body and produce biologically active substances, which has become an emerging living treatment method. The uncontrolled diffusion of microorganisms in the body is always a major obstacle to clinical application. Bacterial escape causes physical encapsulation isolation technology to be difficult to achieve for a long time. The ideal encapsulation material needs to meet two core conditions: (1) to resist the internal forces generated by bacterial proliferation; (2) Have sufficient mechanical toughness to withstand deformation caused by surrounding tissues; At the same time, the preparation process should be biocompatible and maintain bacterial activity. Implantable hydrogels are a physical strategy for confining therapeutic cells to the target site, and such living materials are expected to serve as local drug reservoirs that dynamically sense the lesion microenvironment. This study verified the therapeutic effect in the mouse joint infection model by developing implantable living materials (ILM), designing engineered bacteria to sense and inhibit the activity of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and attempting to build a long-term stable encapsulation of engineered bacteria in vivo with disease perception and autonomous drug release functional system.
