• The MagBIO project involves 18 European and US academic partner organisations, funded by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
• Dr Alfred Fernandez-Castane will lead a team of 67 researchers to develop living, cancer-fighting ‘magnetobots’
• The next-generation bots, specially engineered microorganisms, will help diagnose solid cancer tumours and deliver targeted treatments

Aston University has been awarded €1.2m through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Staff Exchanges programme for a project bringing together 18 partner organisations to develop unique cancer-fighting ‘magnetobots’.

The magnetobots, made from microorganisms called magnetotactic bacteria, will combine diagnostic imaging and targeted therapies (a field jointly known as ‘theranostic’) technologies to identify and treat solid tumours of common cancers in Europe, including pancreatic, breast, lung, and colorectal cancer. The overall project will use a combination of biology, chemistry, engineering and imaging techniques to study how the bacteria grow, how they make their magnetic particles, and how their surface can be modified.

Magnetotactic bacteria, which are found in nature, make magnetic particles inside their cells, called magnetosomes, to help the bacteria navigate through their environment using magnetic fields. They are often found in watery places such as lakes, rivers, sediments and low-oxygen environments. The MagBIO team, led by Dr Alfred Fernandez-Castane, reader in chemical and biochemical engineering and principal investigator at Aston Institute for Membrane Excellence (AIME) and the Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI), will attempt to harness this natural magnetic property and affiliation for low-oxygen environments.

Researchers will look to add ‘payloads’, such as anti-cancer drugs, drug-loaded liposomes, and immune-stimulating materials, to the surface of the bacteria. The magnetic particles in the bacteria could help researchers to guide them precisely to tumours, using external magnetic fields, while tracking them using imaging methods like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

The team will build on previous research into magnetotactic bacteria, including their use in biotechnology, imaging and biomedicine. At Aston University, Dr Fernandez-Castane’s research group has already used magnetotactic bacteria and their magnetosomes to recover valuable proteins from blood serum and recover critical metals from waste materials.

All the partners will have specific responsibilities within the research project. Aston University will work to understand how magnetotactic bacteria can be grown, controlled and produced reliably. Dr Fernandez-Castane and his fellow Aston researchers – Professor Alan Goddard, Professor Andrew Devitt, Dr Ivana Milic, Professor Paul Topham, Dr Martina Pasini, Dr George Teke and Dr Marta Maso-Martinez – will use bioreactors, similar to the controlled tanks used in biotechnology and pharmaceutical manufacturing. The team will look at how to control oxygen levels, nutrients, growth conditions and process scale-up so that the bacteria can be produced more consistently.

Another focus of the Aston team’s research will be sustainability. This includes improving yields, reducing waste, using digital monitoring tools, and looking at whether by-products or waste streams from the process can be reused or reduced. A promising medical technology cannot move forward unless it can be made safely, consistently and at a useful scale.

An important feature of the project is the interdisciplinary, international and intersectoral collaborative effort between up to 67 researchers. Through integrated secondments between the 18 partner institutes, MagBIO will use knowledge transfer to train 34 early-stage researchers (ESRs) and 33 experienced researchers (ERs) to be future leaders in academia and industry.

Dr Fernandez-Castane said:

“We are incredibly proud that MagBIO represents one of the first coordinated Europe-wide efforts to bring together leading experts in magnetotactic bacteria with specialists from complementary disciplines to explore living magnetobots for cancer theranostics. The field is still at an early stage, but the potential is truly exciting. By building on a strong foundation of pioneering research, MagBIO aims to create the interdisciplinary momentum needed to advance next-generation theranostics based on living bacteria.”