The GPS for Oncology: Ending the era of ‘blind’ cancer removal

For decades, cancer surgery has relied on a high-stakes version of “educated guessing.” A surgeon opens a patient, removes the primary tumor they can see on a scan, and then faces an agonising choice: how many of the surrounding lymph nodes—the body’s “hidden highways” for disease—should they cut out just to be safe?

Stewart Bartlett, CEO of Ferronova, believes we are finally moving past this era of surgical guesswork. For Bartlett, the problem isn’t the skill of the surgeons, but the limits of human sight. “You can’t see the cancer in the lymph nodes with any current medical imaging,” he says. “If there’s a few cells left in a node somewhere, they’re going to continue to grow and come back. You’re essentially operating blind.”

The human cost of this “blindness” is staggering. In gastric and esophageal cancers, nearly 60% of patients see their cancer return after surgery. Bartlett, a former electronic engineer who traded consumer tech for the high-stakes world of oncology, saw this as a classic navigation problem. If a GPS can find a car in a city, why can’t we find a microscopic cell in a human body?

The solution, developed at Ferronova, is effectively a “GPS for the tumor.” Rather than relying on blurry CT scans, surgeons inject magnetic nanoparticles into the tumor. These particles are engineered to follow the exact same pathway the cancer takes. They don’t get lost in the bloodstream; they stay in the lymph fluid, marking the precise nodes that need to be removed with a “magnetic breadcrumb” trail.

By ending the era of “blind” removal, Ferronova isn’t just trying to improve a surgery; they’re trying to eliminate the devastating news that a cancer has returned. It’s an elegant, engineering-led fix for a biological mystery—one that is now being put to the test in world-leading cancer centers from Adelaide to the US.

In the current medical landscape, the “standard of care” is a blunt instrument. Surgeons often perform aggressive removals of healthy tissue to minimise the risk of recurrence, removing an entire stomach or oesophagus, leading to permanent complications.

Ferronova’s FerroTrace represents a new guard of Australian medtech: companies moving away from systemic drugs and toward precision engineering.

Ferronova is currently closing a $8 million capital raise to fund a 140-patient registration study across Australia and Europe. With $6 million already committed by internal investors who have seen the preliminary data, Bartlett is looking for the final $2 million to finalise the bridge to commercial reality.

“Well over 95% of oncology investment goes into drugs for end-stage disease,” Bartlett notes. “We are focusing on the 1% to 4% of investment that actually helps the majority of patients: those sitting in a surgical theatre today.”

With completion of its gastric trial imminent and 84 patients already successfully treated, Ferronova is moving toward a future where “clear margins” aren’t just a hope, but a calculated certainty.