Ashutosh Kumar

Ashutosh Kumar is a postdoctoral fellow at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. His research integrates synthetic biology, cancer biology, and AI to develop innovative probiotic therapeutic platforms. He investigates how engineered microbes can be harnessed to deliver targeted therapies for chronic gut-based diseases. During his doctoral studies, he uncovered novel mechanisms by which tumor-associated bacteria promote inflammation, metastasis, and immune suppression in ovarian cancer, advancing understanding of the microbiome’s role in cancer biology. He also developed one of the first on-demand, aspirin-inducible probiotic immunotherapy systems, engineering bacteria to locally produce therapeutic molecules in vivo. As an MIT-Novo Nordisk Artificial Intelligence Postdoctoral Fellow, Ashutosh will apply AI-driven protein design to engineer probiotic platforms capable of producing and delivering therapeutic peptides, including GLP-1-based treatments, with controlled activation and localized release. His work could establish a new class of living medicines for metabolic, gastrointestinal, and inflammatory diseases, enabling more precise, accessible, and patient-friendly therapeutic delivery.