A glow-in-the-dark germ that can speed up treatment for leukaemia

UWE Bristol researchers have managed to harness the glow-in-the-dark properties of bacteria to help some leukaemia sufferers receive swifter treatment.

Bioluminescence – light emission from living organisms – increases in some bacteria when they come into contact with certain drugs. By engineering an e-coli with a high sensitivity to a chemotherapy drug, the scientists have developed a fast method to test whether the compound is the most suitable to fight acute myeloid leukaemia tumour cells.