Recently, historic efforts to harness living organisms to fight cancer have been revived via synthetic biology. Certain circulating bacteria can inherently locate tumors, and be engineered to controllably induce local cytotoxicity while remaining unobtrusive to the host system. Dr. Schürle proposes to advance this promising approach by leveraging bacteria that are naturally capable of producing magnetic particles within their body. With the application of low and high frequency alternating magnetic fields, these living, mobile therapeutics can be monitored in vivo and also be remotely activated to achieve increased tumor penetration, toxin release, and their own self-destruction to provide an externally-controlled ‘safety net’. Her goal is to shed light on the clinical potential of combining the power of magnetics and probiotics, in order to test the hypothesis that this one-two punch may pave the way for a revolutionized cancer therapy.
