Magnets Made By Soil Bacteria Offer Hope For Breast and Prostate Cancer

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Scientists are developing magnetically guided microscopic projectiles that can be injected into patients' blood to attack breast, prostate and other tumors. The project -- led by researchers at Sheffield University -- builds on progress in two key medical fields. The first involves viruses that specifically attack tumors. The second focuses on soil bacteria that manufacture magnets which they use to align themselves in the Earth's magnetic field.

The anti-cancer viruses that are being exploited by the Sheffield group -- who have been funded by Cancer Research UK -- are known as oncolytic viruses. They occur naturally but can also be modified to improve their efficacy and to limit the chances of them infecting healthy cells. 'The problem is that oncolytic viruses attract the attention of the body's immune defenses and only skin-deep tumors can be tackled this way before the viruses are blocked fairly quickly by our cell defenses,' said Dr Faith Howard, another project leader. A solution, the scientists say, is to coat the viruses in magnetic particles. Injected into the blood, these microscopic projectiles could then be directed quickly to a tumor -- by using magnets placed over a patient's body -- before their progress can be blocked by immune defenses.

An oncolytic virus had a diameter of about 180 nanometers while the magnets needed to be about 50 nanometers in size, added Howard. (A nanometre is a billionth of a meter.) 'These tiny magnets could be made in the laboratory but we have found bacteria do a better job of manufacturing them than we could,' she added. Some species of soil bacteria synthesize iron oxide nanoparticles that are called magnetosomes. These are used as compasses that allow the microbes to navigate in Earth's magnetic field and help them find optimum conditions for their growth and survival. 'These microscopic magnets they make are perfectly shaped and ideally suited to the microscopic packages we need to target deep cancers,' Howard said.

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