The story.
My wife Moran was diagnosed with a Grade 3 Astrocytoma in 2024. IDH-1 mutant. A brain tumor with a specific genetic fingerprint that has become the center of everything we do.
I'm a builder. I spent years in product and engineering. When Moran's diagnosis came, I did what builders do: I read everything, I mapped the problem, I looked for the gap. And I found one.
The IDH-1 mutation causes her tumor to produce a molecule called 2-hydroxyglutarate — 2-HG. This molecule does two things: it locks the tumor's cells in an aggressive state, and it suppresses the immune cells that would otherwise attack it. It's a metabolic trick the tumor runs to hide from the body's own defenses.
There's a drug for this. Vorasidenib, approved in 2024, blocks 2-HG production by about 93%. Moran is on it. It works. But it leaves a residual — roughly 7% — that no drug was designed to clear. And that residual is the question no one had built an answer to.
So we decided to build one.
What we built
Morca Bio is building a bacterial therapeutic: an engineered organism that senses 2-HG in the tumor, depletes it, and then kills itself when the job is done. Three functions in a single construct — sense, deplete, self-limit.
The bacterium is E. coli Nissle 1917, a probiotic strain with decades of clinical use. Modified, safety-tested, delivered directly to the tumor site via a minimally invasive injection. It doesn't circulate through the body. It acts locally, on the signal the tumor itself produces.
Vorasidenib blocks production. Our construct removes the product. Together, near-complete depletion — from two directions — that neither achieves alone.
There is no precedent for this. No one has delivered a live bacterial therapeutic into a brain tumor. No one has built a living circuit that depletes an oncometabolite in CNS tissue. We are building first-in-class science against a specific patient. That is the constraint that shapes everything.
Why public
We are doing this in the open. Every experiment is named before it runs. Every result is recorded here — positive findings and kill criteria alike. The journal is the accountability structure.
We don't have decades. The urgency is personal and it is real. Openness is how we hold ourselves to it.
If you've found this page because you understand IDH-mutant gliomas — as a scientist, a clinician, a patient, or a family member — we want to hear from you. This program is better for the people who engage with it.