Bacteria like cargo ships, modified to follow desired directions and loaded with drugs to be released as needed. Micro-hybrid bio-hybrids call them their creators, a team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart. For the moment, in fact, the research stops at the realization, but in the future these microbots could become the last frontier of minimally invasive treatments against cancer.
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The visionary idea
To tell it is Birgül Akolpoglu, first author of the study that su Science Advances shows the promises of these bacteria. “Imagine being able to inject these bacteria-based microbots into the body of a cancer patient. With a magnet we could precisely direct the particles towards the tumor. Once these particles surround the tumor, a laser aimed at the tissue can trigger the release of the drug. In this way, not only the immune system is awakened to activate itself, but also the drugs released can help eliminate the tumor ”.
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The researcher refers to the ability of bacteria to function as a sort of immunotherapy: an intuition that is due to the American surgeon William B. Coley and his experiments, conducted more than a century ago. Akolpoglu and colleagues, however, are not only imagining to bring bacteria close to the tumor and to locally awaken the immune response: they have designed and created bacterial microbots, loading them with what is necessary to respond to external stimuli. That is, to understand where to go and when to release the loaded drug.
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How bacteria-robots work
The researchers used bacteria from E. coli and they have modified them with very small particles: one holds the chemotherapy drugs, the other serves to drive the bacteria. In detail, the particles carrying the drug are thermosensitive nanoliposomes: when heated by laser light, and also thanks to an acidic environment, they break down and release the drug. The others are magnetic particles, which can therefore respond to directions imparted from the outside with a magnet. The ability of bacteria to move through viscous tissues, as well as that of feeling environments poor in oxygen and acids (typical characteristics of the micro-tumor environment), according to the researchers, facilitates the achievement of the desired target.
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Researchers have shown that it is possible to load bacteria in this way – with an efficiency of 90% they claim – as well as direct them (without compromising the bacterial motility itself), as they have tested in some experiments with channels and viscous environments capable of mimicking. the tumor environment. For now, it is a microrobotic platform on which to work, they conclude, capable of overcoming the physiological barriers for the release of on-demand drugs under the control of various stimuli.