Cancer tumors are particularly adept at evading the body’s immune response, making treatment difficult. A new study has genetically engineered a common gut bacteria, enabling it to seek out and destroy cancer tumors from the inside.

There are multiple ways tumors can survive by evading the body’s immune responses. One is to prevent immune cells from getting involved in chemotaxis, the process by which immune cells detect a tumor and migrate towards it to mount an attack. Chemotaxis is driven by cytokines, tiny proteins that signal other immune cells. Chemokines are a subset of cytokines that cause immune cell migration.

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The chemokine CXCL16 recruits T cells, the white blood cells that help fight infection and cancer, to infiltrate cells. CXCL16 and its receptor, CXCR6 have been shown to improve survival rates in patients with colon and lung cancers. And recent studies suggest that CXCL16 and CXCR6 together generate anti-tumor immunity. However, no one has discovered a method to deliver CXCL16 into the tumor’s cellular environment.

Read more: New Atlas