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Life Sciences & Medicine Active Updated Jul 16, 2026

Cracking a 15-year mystery in how a gut toxin causes colon cancer

A toxin called BFT, made by a gut bacterium carried by up to 20 percent of healthy people, has been linked to colorectal cancer for over 15 years without anyone knowing how it entered colon cells. A Johns Hopkins team led by Cynthia Sears found the receptor it binds, claudin-4, and built a decoy protein that blocked the toxin in mice. The arc will run as that decoy moves toward testing in people.

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  1. Jul 16, 2026 Latest

    A Johns Hopkins team led by Cynthia Sears, working with Harvard Medical School, ran a genome-wide CRISPR screen and identified claudin-4 as the receptor the gut toxin BFT must bind to enter colon cells, then built a decoy protein that intercepted the toxin and protected mice from damage to the colon's protective barrier.

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