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The mission of the Commensal Bacteria and Probiotics Engineering Platform is to develop new generation probiotics (NGPs for Next-Generation Probiotics) in the frame of the different projects of the team but also in the context of different national and international collaborations. Probiotics have been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2011 as “live microorganisms that, when administered in adequate amounts, confer a health benefit on the host”. NGPs are either traditional probiotics, such as lactobacilli and bifidobacteria, which are genetically modified to deliver in situ molecules of therapeutic interest, or commensal anaerobic bacteria potentially beneficial to animal and human health.

The first objective of our platform was to genetically manipulate food bacteria to deliver proteins of health interest. Since then, it has evolved and today the expression and purification of recombinant proteins is also being developing. Currently, the next challenge of the platform is to adapt our genetic manipulation techniques of traditional probiotic bacteria to commensal ones isolated from the gut microbiota (which are extremely sensitive to oxygen and therefore very difficult to manipulate genetically), in order to understand their mechanisms of action and enhance their beneficial effects to ultimately validate their use in different pathophysiological situations in human and animal health. For this, we have recently equipped the platform with a Jacomex anaerobic chamber containing a Memmert incubator and a Gene Pulser XcellTM Electroporation System from Biorad.

Today, we are able to handle numerous national and international research collaboration requests from academic and industrial partners. We aim to construct and characterize the recombinant strains to directly deliver in situ molecules of therapeutic interest to humans and animals, but also to purify the proteins produced by the recombinant strains constructed.

Scientific leader: Luis Bermudez (luis.bermudez@inrae.fr)

Operational leader: Anne Aucouturier (anne.aucouturier@inrae.fr)