Researcher wins £2million for quantum tech ‘spy’ system
15 Dec 2025
Heriot-Watt University researcher Dr Aldona Mzyk has been awarded £2 million to develop quantum sensors able to track immune cells as they encounter cancer tumours.
She received a four -year Future Leaders Fellowship from UK Research and Innovation to support her work.
The project employs sensors the size of an electron, capable of detecting minute changes thousands of time smaller than the width of a human hair, said a university statement.
The research is intended to improve understanding of why cancer immunotherapies work in the case of some patients but not in others.
Immune cells’ metabolism is frequently disrupted when they come into contact with cancer tissue, rendering them ineffective.
One example is CAR-T cells – laboratory engineered immune cells. These have been effective against leukaemia and lymphoma blood cancers but successful in few than half of cases treating solid breast, lung and bowel tumours.
Mzyk’s work will employ quantum sensing together with optical spectroscopy and microfluidics to create an integrated platform capable of tracking cellular metabolism in thousands of cells within seconds.
She said: "Every minute, 17 million people in the world die from cancer. We know that immune cell failure comes from changes in their metabolism when they interact with cancer cells. To improve immune cell performance, we need to understand how to control these metabolic changes by monitoring free radical production inside the cells - essentially spying on how they behave.
“This requires incredibly fast and precise detection methods, which quantum sensors can provide for the first time."
Principal Investigator for Heriot-Watt’s Nanoscale Quantum Sensing Facility in the university’s School of Engineering & Physical Sciences, Professor Cristian Bonato, said Dr Mzyk's fellowship had the potential to revolutionise healthcare.
"Quantum sensing is transforming medical diagnostics as its sensitivity, down to the single molecule level, enables us to detect disease early, which often leads to better treatment outcomes,” he explained.
“At Heriot-Watt, we're developing quantum sensors that achieve unprecedented precision, from imaging magnetic fields in nanomaterials to detecting small quantities of molecules relevant for biomedical research.”
