It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Beating cancer by eating cancer
Researchers engineer bacteria capable of consuming tumours from the inside out
Waterloo researchers (L to R) Dr. Brian Ingalls, Dr. Sara Sadr and Dr. Marc Aucoin have engineered bacteria to treat cancer by eating tumours from the inside out.
A research team led by the University of Waterloo is developing a novel tool to treat cancer by engineering hungry bacteria to literally eat tumours from the inside out.
“Bacteria spores enter the tumour, finding an environment where there are lots of nutrients and no oxygen, which this organism prefers, and so it starts eating those nutrients and growing in size,” said Dr. Marc Aucoin, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo. “So, we are now colonizing that central space, and the bacterium is essentially ridding the body of the tumour.”
Key to the approach is a bacterium called Clostridium sporogenes, which is commonly found in soil and can only grow in environments with absolutely no oxygen.
The core of a solid, cancerous tumour is comprised of dead cells and is oxygen-free, making it an ideal breeding ground for the bacterium to multiply.
But there is a biological catch: when the cancer-eating organisms reach the outer edges of tumours, they are exposed to low levels of oxygen and die without completing their mission to fully destroy them.
To solve that problem, the researchers first added a gene to the organism from a related bacterium that can better tolerate oxygen, enabling it to live longer near the outside of a targeted tumour.
They then found a way to activate the oxygen-resistant gene at just the right time – critical to preventing bacteria from inadvertently growing in oxygen-rich places such as the bloodstream – by leveraging a phenomenon known as quorum sensing.
In simple terms, quorum sensing involves chemical signals released by bacteria. Only when many bacteria have grown in a tumour is the signal strong enough to turn on the oxygen-resistant gene, ensuring it doesn’t happen too soon.
In one study, researchers demonstrated that Clostridium sporogenes can be modified to tolerate oxygen. In a follow-up study, they tested their quorum sensing system by making bacteria produce a green fluorescent protein.
“Using synthetic biology, we built something like an electrical circuit, but instead of wires we used pieces of DNA,” said Dr. Brian Ingalls, a professor of applied mathematics at Waterloo. “Each piece has its job. When assembled correctly, they form a system that works in a predictable way.”
Researchers now plan to combine the oxygen-resistant gene and the quorum-sensing timing mechanism in one bacterium and test it on a tumour in pre-clinical trials.
The promising project grew out of work by PhD student Bahram Zargar, who was supervised by Ingalls and Dr. Pu Chen, a retired professor of chemical engineering at Waterloo. The work reflects Waterloo’s broader emphasis on interdisciplinary health innovation. Our engineers, mathematicians and life scientists are collaborating to design technology-enabled solutions that translate discovery into practical care.
Waterloo researchers partnered with the Center for Research on Environmental Microbiology (CREM Co Labs), a Toronto company co-founded by Dr. Zargar, on the project. The group includes Dr. Sara Sadr, a former Waterloo doctoral student who had a leading role in the research.
Equipment installed on a high-altitude tower and collecting information from the ground level using bikes accurately captured methane and ethane emissions in Osaka city.
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, with an impact estimated as 80 times that of CO₂. Although efforts are being made to reduce the contribution of big polluters to methane in Japan, new research from Osaka Metropolitan University suggests that smaller sources are vastly underestimated in the Osaka metropolitan area.
The discovery was made by an international collaborative research team led by Associate Professor Masahito Ueyama of the Graduate School of Agriculture who used a tower for high-altitude readings and a bike for ground-level readings of methane and ethane. Instead of spot checks, the measurements were continuous and integrated over the city center, giving a more complete overview of their output.
When the researchers compared their findings with government inventories, they found large differences. As well as the well-known large emitters of greenhouse gases, especially chemical and industrial plants, they found unaccounted emissions from numerous small sources, including restaurants, commercial facilities, and private residences.
Because emissions were higher on weekdays, followed a clear day–night pattern, and included ethane—a gas linked to human activity—the researchers concluded that people, not natural processes, were the main source. Even so, methane produced by biological processes was also underestimated, probably due to small but widespread sources, like sewage manholes and the production of fermented foods common in Japanese cuisine.
Ultimately, the study highlights hidden sources of methane that could be fixed with technology and policy. “By clarifying the existence of methane emissions originating from city gas that had previously been overlooked, our research is expected to aid in identifying these unaccounted emission sources within urban areas,” Professor Ueyama explained.
“This research establishes a method for real-time monitoring of methane emissions by source, which is expected to be utilized in assessments evaluating the effectiveness of emission reduction measures,” he added. He believes that the group’s technique is useful for separating human fossil fuel leakage from biological emissions. “Going forward, it is hoped that this approach will be expanded to other cities and utilized for methane emission management and policy formulation in a wider range of urban areas.”
The findings were published in Environmental Science & Technology.
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About OMU
Established in Osaka as one of the largest public universities in Japan, Osaka Metropolitan University is committed to shaping the future of society through the “Convergence of Knowledge” and the promotion of world-class research. For more research news, visit https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/ and follow us on social media: X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.
Natural Gas and Biogenic METHANE Emissions from an Urban Center, Sakai, Japan, Based on Simultaneous Measurements of METHANE and C2H6 fluxes Based on the Eddy Covariance Method
Industrial research labs were invented in Europe but made the U.S. a tech superpower
Circles indicate the number of patent applications filed by inventors in U.S. cities between 1920 and 1945. Cities still dominated by traditional, craftsmanship-based innovation are shown in red, while cities that had largely transitioned to the new science-based approach are shown in green. The map reveals that science-based innovation was concentrated primarily in the Northeast and in what is now known as the American Rust Belt. In its heyday, however, this region served as the Silicon Valley of the early twentieth century. Innovation centered on industrial research laboratories and was driven by teams of highly skilled engineers. Interestingly, the universities leading these efforts were not the elite institutions at the top of the academic hierarchy, but public universities rooted in the industrial heartland — including Purdue, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota — which pioneered close collaborations with industry and helped launch the era of university patenting in the United States.
Credit: Please credit the source when using this image
It's a small number of research labs inside tech giants that are driving the rapid rise of AI today. But this is not the first time such labs have taken center stage, a new study shows: The United States' rise as a technological superpower was fueled not just by inventions, but by the emergence of industrial research labs in the 1920s – which reshaped who invented, where innovation happened, and how breakthroughs were made.
AT A GLANCE:
The making of a tech superpower: The U.S. transition to a leading economy was not gradual; it happened abruptly in the early 1920s
Research labs as key drivers: The industrial research lab – an idea born in the German-speaking world – supercharged teamwork and led to an explosion of innovation
Engineers took over: engineers made up just 0.7% of the U.S. population but accounted for 25% of all patents by 1945
The shift did not benefit everyone equally: women and immigrants were largely shut out of the new system
This provides a new perspective on today’s AI breakthroughs, which are driven by a revival of R&D labs at tech giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon
How did the United States overtake Europe to become the world’s technological leader within just a few decades? A new study by researcher Frank Neffke from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH) and colleagues from the Growth Lab at Harvard University published in the journal Research Policy suggests that the answer lies not primarily in technological breakthroughs but in a fundamental shift in how innovation itself was organized.
"We analyze systemic shifts in the way invention was organized in the US, supported by a massive data effort – digitizing hundreds of thousands of pages of historical documents, covering 1.6 million patents from millions of inventors between 1856 and 2000," Neffke says.
The researchers found that U.S. innovation did not evolve gradually. Instead, a cluster of abrupt changes occurred in the early 1920s. “At the center of this transformation was an organizational innovation: the industrial research lab – an idea born in the German-speaking world that rapidly diffused in the U.S. after World War I.” Around this time, invention became more science-based, teamwork became the norm, and engineers replaced craftsmen as the driving force behind technological progress.
THE RISE OF THE INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH LAB
For much of the 19th century, American innovation was a craft. Individual inventor-entrepreneurs – think Edison, think Tesla – tinkered their way to breakthroughs. Often, inventor teams were held together by family networks or a few trusted collaborators. It was a system that worked and produced important advances but relied largely on trial and error rather than systematic scientific inquiry. It had a ceiling.
Then, in the early 1920s, the idea of the industrial research lab crossed the Atlantic: “Firms began hiring teams of specialized engineers and scientists who worked together,” Neffke says. “This shift enabled an explosion of what economists call ‘Neue Kombinationen’ – novel combinations of existing technologies that drive innovation forward.”
By 1945, engineers made up just 0.7% of the US population but accounted for 25% of all patents. Invention had become a profession, and the lab had become its home.
TEAMWORK SUPERCHARGED
Research labs proved especially effective at organizing teamwork. “In fact, invention became teamwork,” says Neffke, who is also a professor at the Interdisciplinary Transformation University (IT:U). The study shows that teams working in these research labs were more likely to collaborate repeatedly, collaborate across long distances, and produce novel technological combinations than teams working outside them.
Also, invention became increasingly science-based. Instead of relying primarily on practical know-how, inventors began drawing on formal scientific knowledge. This marked a decisive shift from a craftsmanship-based system to one rooted in science and engineering.
A NEW GEOGRAPHY OF INNOVATION
The rise of industrial research labs reshaped where innovation happened. During the late 19th century, inventive activity had spread from the large cities to smaller cities and towns. But with the emergence of research labs, innovation increasingly reconcentrated in a few large metropolitan areas.
“This shift helped fuel the rise of a small number of large cities in what we now know as the American Rust Belt, but which in its heyday was the Silicon Valley of the early 20th century,” says Neffke.
BARRIERS TO PARTICIPATION
While the new system accelerated innovation, it also changed who could participate. The study finds that women and foreign-born inventors became significantly underrepresented in the emerging science-based innovation system compared to the remnants of the craftsmanship-based innovation of the prior era.
These shifts created participation barriers that persisted for decades, highlighting how changes in the organization of innovation can have lasting social consequences.
A CENTURY LATER, THE LAB IS BACK
However, industrial research labs did not dominate forever. Their importance diminished after the 1970s, when firm-based teams underperformed standalone teams in novelty creation, the researchers found. But just recently, “we have seen a revival of R&D labs driven by tech giants like Google, Meta, and Amazon,” Neffke says.
“They have rebuilt large-scale research operations, and the pattern looks familiar: As in much of the 20th century – when behemoths like Bell Labs not only patented, but also pushed the scientific frontier, spawning several Nobel Prize winners and entire academic fields – many of today's most consequential breakthroughs in AI are coming from industrial labs.”
LESSONS FOR TODAY’S INNOVATION SYSTEMS
“We often describe the history of technology as a succession of technological breakthroughs, from steam engines to the Bessemer process in steel production, electricity, transistors, and so on that transform economies and societies. However, our study suggests that social innovations may be just as important.”
Industrial research labs not only accelerated invention but also reshaped the structure of the innovation system and the composition of the workforce. Today, we witness how another organizational innovation – online collaboration platforms – transforms how work and innovation are organized. Understanding these dynamics is crucial, the researchers argue, because such shifts in the organization of innovation can have far-reaching consequences – not only for technological progress, but for economic development and society as a whole.
The Complexity Science Hub (CSH) is Europe’s research center for the study of complex systems. We derive meaning from data from a range of disciplines – economics, medicine, ecology, and the social sciences – as a basis for actionable solutions for a better world. CSH members are Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), BOKU University, Central European University (CEU), Graz University of Technology, Interdisciplinary Transformation University Austria (IT:U), Medical University of Vienna, TU Wien, University of Continuing Education Krems, Vetmeduni Vienna, Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Austrian Economic Chambers (WKO).
