Functional Modification of Bacteria during Plasmolysis and Deplasmolysis for Tumor Diagnosis and Treatment

Bacteria have been widely used as biotherapeutics or drug delivery carriers, due to their unique biological functions. However, the clinical translation of living bacteria for biomedical applications is largely limited by their inevitable side effects and poor therapeutic efficacy. Here, we report a simple, but effective method for the functional enhancement of bacteria based on plasmolysis and deplasmolysis (P/deP) to entangle functional polymer chains with the bacterial walls. It was found that the modified efficiency by this method was 2–3-fold higher than traditional methods, such as the Huisgen cycloaddition reaction and carbodiimide reaction. Moreover, this method did not require expensive or toxic reagents and could modify a variety of functional polymers on the bacterial surface in one step. Importantly, modified bacteria achieved effective tumor imaging and 95% tumor growth inhibition. This simple and universal method might open a new window for the construction of modified bacteria for disease diagnosis and treatment.