bims-livmat 2026-09-20 papers

Bioact Mater. 2027 Feb;68 82-95

Bioprinted core-shell living material platform for spatially controlled encapsulation of Bacillus subtilis and sustained metabolite exchange.

Lin Huang, Kathleen L Furtado, William Brakewood, Maxwell Neal, Yazhi Sun, Jasmine Le, Qi Xie, Jacob Hizon, Shivam Singhal, Mariana Salas Garcia, Joshua Tran, Karsten Zengler, Michael Betenbaugh, Jack A Gilber, Shaochen Chen.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) represents an escalating global health crisis, demanding alternative strategies to reduce resistant pathogen burden across environments. Microbe-based biocontrol is promising, yet effectively deploying it in practical settings remains challenging. In this study, we present a 3D bioprinted core-shell construct featuring a polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) shell with tunable nanoscale porosity, encapsulating germinable spores of the biocontrol agent Bacillus subtilis TH035. This configuration supports long-term spore viability while providing protection from common environmental stressors including UV-C irradiation, ethanol exposure, and desiccation over 4 weeks. The nanoporous PEGDA shell enables effective bacterial confinement while facilitating sufficient metabolite exchange for B. subtilis germination and growth, as well as suppression of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) growth by approximately one order of magnitude. This approach demonstrates the feasibility of embedding B. subtilis spores within engineered scaffolds for extended competitive functionality. The versatility and scalability of digital light processing (DLP) based bioprinting offers significant potential for tailored designs and high-throughput manufacturing. This proof-of-concept platform may find future applications in areas such as biomedical packaging, environmental sanitation, and built environment surface coatings, particularly in settings where intermittent moisture or nutrient availability can support spore germination and biocontrol activity.

Keywords: 3D bioprinting; Antimicrobial resistance; Bacillus subtilis; Biocontrol; Engineered living materials; Hydrogels; MRSA; Pathogens

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bioactmat.2026.08.025

Genetics. 2026 Sep 17. pii: iyag235. [Epub ahead of print]

Genetic principles enabling the creation of bacteria-based therapeutics.

Ashley B Williams, Thomas M Groseclose, Sara A M Holec, Darrian Newman, Darcy S O Mora, Lyndsey Linke.

Genetic engineering can transform bacteria (including Salmonella, Escherichia coli, Listeria, and Yersinia) from naturally occurring microbes into programmable therapeutics. Unlike passive platforms, engineered bacteria can localize to defined biological niches, sense environmental cues, regulate programmed activity in situ, interact with host tissues in novel ways, and persist for controlled periods. These properties make bacteria versatile medicines but require genetic control of precision, safety, stability, and activity under clinical conditions. Major design layers include strain or "chassis" selection, attenuation and biocontainment, control of therapeutic activity, targeting and persistence, and genotype-to-phenotype stability during manufacturing and in vivo use. These features also create liabilities, including off-target behavior, unstable expression, and evolutionary loss of function under selection. Progress depends on safe, clinically translatable chassis with integrated, bounded, and durable behaviors. This review examines the genetic design principles and liabilities of bacteria-based therapeutics, approaches used to produce clinical and near-clinical candidates, and the emergence of programmed bacteria delivering complete gene editing systems to therapeutically relevant cells.

Keywords: bacteria-based therapeutics; biocontainment; chassis selection; gene editing delivery; genetic engineering; live biotherapeutics; synthetic biology; tumor microenvironment

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/genetics/iyag235

Int J Pharm. 2026 Sep 12. pii: S0378-5173(26)00858-6. [Epub ahead of print] 127410

Bio-intelligent delivery systems for regenerative medicine: from living biomaterials to clinical translation.

Mrinal Singh, Divya Tripathi, Dipak Maity.

Bio-intelligent delivery systems are redefining the boundaries of regenerative medicine, moving the field beyond passive scaffolds toward platforms that actively sense, respond to, and participate in tissue repair. This review examines how living cells, cell-derived extracellular vesicles, stimuli-responsive matrices, and closed-loop wearable devices can be integrated into a coherent therapeutic design framework and what stands between these systems and routine clinical use. We begin by analyzing the paracrine biology of mesenchymal stem cells, focusing on how immunomodulatory mediators and extracellular vesicles orchestrate repair, and why donor variability and context-dependent licensing continue to constrain clinical predictability. Building on this, we compare four classes of living delivery platforms - cell-laden hydrogels, secretome- and vesicle-loaded matrices, microcapsule systems, and microneedle constructs, evaluating their capacity to sustain cell viability, regulate release kinetics, and improve local retention over bolus injection. Precision targeting strategies employing surface functionalization and peptide-mediated homing are assessed across cardiac, hepatic, and pulmonary contexts. Smart biomaterials responsive to pH, temperature, and reactive oxygen species are then evaluated for their ability to synchronize therapeutic delivery with the dynamic phases of tissue repair. Wearable biosensing platforms and three-dimensional bioprinted constructs are discussed as next-generation tools for closed-loop, patient-adaptive therapy. Throughout, we identify scale-up inconsistency, immunogenicity, regulatory fragmentation, and the absence of validated potency assays as recurring translational barriers. We conclude that convergence of GMP-compatible biomanufacturing, harmonized regulation, and artificial intelligence-assisted design is necessary to advance these platforms from preclinical promise to reproducible, patient-specific clinical practice.

Keywords: Controlled release; Extracellular vesicles; Mesenchymal stem cells; Organ-targeted delivery; Regenerative medicine; Smart biomaterials; Stimuli-responsive hydrogels

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpharm.2026.127410

Food Chem. 2026 Sep 11. pii: S0308-8146(26)03301-7. [Epub ahead of print]529 151141

Advances in co-encapsulation of probiotics and prebiotics: From improving probiotic survivability, intestinal colonization and health benefits to food applications.

Waqas Ashraf, Tao Fei, Jiamu Kang, Xue Lin, Lu Wang.

The stability and survival of probiotics in the gastrointestinal tract are major limitations affecting their health-promoting functions. Recently, co-encapsulation of probiotics with prebiotics has emerged as a promising approach to address these challenges. This review thoroughly examines various approaches, including spray drying, freeze drying, hydrogels, Maillard conjugates, and edible films, for co-encapsulating probiotics with prebiotics. Prebiotics provide enhanced protection to the encapsulated probiotic strains, improving their stability during environmental exposure, processing, and storage. The literature on co-encapsulated probiotics indicates enhanced survival rates throughout the gastrointestinal tract and improved gut colonization. The review also explores co-encapsulation as a promising approach for developing functional foods that meet scalability and regulatory requirements while preserving probiotic viability and health benefits in the host body. In conclusion, co-encapsulated prebiotics and probiotics show great potential as a scalable delivery system for developing functional foods with health-promoting effects.

Keywords: Co-encapsulation; Functional foods; Health benefits; Intestinal colonization; Prebiotics; Probiotics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2026.151141

Materials (Basel). 2026 Aug 28. pii: 3661. [Epub ahead of print]19(17):

Molecular and Biosafety Perspectives of Bacterial Self-Healing Concrete: From Sporulation and Biomineralization to Public Health Implications.

Cecilia Manrique-Sam, Ronel Rivas-Torres, Alejandro Miranda-Pinto, Johany Cecilia Sanchez Guillen, Sandra Apaza-Tosocahua, Fernando Farfán-Delgado.

Bacterial self-healing concrete has emerged as a bio-based strategy to enhance the durability of cementitious materials and reduce the environmental impact associated with premature infrastructure deterioration. Its functional principle relies on microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP), through which bacterial metabolism promotes CaCO3 deposition within cracks. However, self-healing efficiency cannot be explained solely by mineral precipitation capacity. Concrete is a restrictive microbial environment characterized by alkalinity, desiccation, osmotic stress, nutrient limitation and physical confinement. Therefore, effective crack sealing requires a coordinated sequence involving bacterial survival, sporulation, germination, metabolic reactivation, biofilm-associated mineral nucleation and localized biomineralization. This integrative narrative review synthesizes mechanistic, material and biosafety evidence on bacterial self-healing concrete, focusing on spore-forming bacteria such as Bacillus subtilis and related taxa, including Paenibacillus. The evidence indicates that stress tolerance, germination signaling, calcium handling, biofilm establishment and stability, and encapsulation-mediated microenvironmental control are key determinants of performance, but remain insufficiently integrated into materials-oriented studies. Large-scale implementation also requires preventive assessment of strain persistence, genetic stability, horizontal gene transfer, environmental microbiome interactions and life-cycle exposure scenarios. Bacterial self-healing concrete should therefore be understood as a living or bioactive material system whose responsible development depends on the integration of microbiology, molecular biology, materials science, civil engineering, environmental risk assessment, occupational health, and public health.

Keywords: bacterial self-healing concrete; biofilms; biomineralization; biosafety; encapsulation; microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation; sporulation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ma19173661