A new review published in Advanced Materials by Laura Sabio and Manuel Salmeron-Sanchez, both based at the University of Glasgow, PRISM-LT’s scientific coordinator, surveys the fast-moving field of Probiotic-based Living Materials (PLMs)—a class of Engineered Living Materials (ELMs) that combine genetically modified probiotics with biocompatible matrices to build smart, responsive therapeutics.

The review covers applications ranging from biosensing to wound healing, cancer therapy, and bone regeneration. One section speaks directly to the scientific logic underpinning PRISM-LT’s own platform: engineered microbial consortia.

Most ELMs developed to date rely on a single engineered organism. The authors note that combining multiple living components into a single functioning material remains a comparatively unexplored strategy, despite its potential to build systems of far greater complexity than any one organism could achieve alone. The review points to early examples, such as bacterial-yeast consortia used to produce tunable nanocellulose materials, as proof of concept for what coordinated multi-organism design can achieve.

This is the same principle PRISM-LT is built on. The consortium’s platform bioprints stem cells alongside genetically engineered “helper” bacteria or yeast, which guide stem cell differentiation through the molecules they present or secrete. Where the review’s featured consortium examples pair bacteria with other microbes, PRISM-LT is pairing engineered bacteria and yeast with stem cells directly, to solve a challenge the review also flags: keeping fast-growing bacteria from overwhelming their more slowly dividing mammalian partners within the same material.

The review is a good indicator of PRISM-LT’s innovative position as a project working on one of the areas the wider research community has identified as underdeveloped and of high-potential.