Inner space — nanorobots may be able to diagnose and treat disease from inside the body
A team of scientists has announced the creation of tiny remote controlled nanorobots that may, one day, enable doctors to diagnose disease and deliver drugs from inside the human body.
The nanorobots, created by a team led by Professor Li Zhang from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and including Professor Kostas Kostarelos from The University of Manchester, are made from biodegradable material — spirulina algae.
These algae, which were a source of nourishment for the Aztecs, were covered in an iron magnetic coating that enables fine-tuning of the rate of degradation. Using magnetic fields, the team were then able to control the algae within biological fluids. Additionally, in their work, the team also described how they were able to release drugs to attack cancer cells using these coated algae bots.
“Rather than fabricate a functional microrobot from scratch using intricate laboratory techniques and processes, we set out to directly engineer smart materials in nature, which are endowed with favourable functionalities for medical applications owing to their intrinsic chemical composition,” explained Zhang. “For instance, because these biohybrid bots have a naturally fluorescent biological interior and magnetic iron-oxide exterior, we can track and actuate a swarm of those agents inside the body quite easily using fluorescence imaging and magnetic resonance imaging.
“Our microrobots have the ability to sense changes in environments associated with the onset of illness and that makes them a promising probe for remote diagnostic sensing of diseases.
“We must now develop this technology further so we are able to fine tune this image-guided therapy and create a proof of concept for the engineering of multifunctional microrobotic and nanorobotic devices.”
“Creating robotic systems which can be propelled and guided in the body has been and still is a holy-grail in the field of delivery system engineering,” added Kostarelos. “Our work takes advantage of some elements offered by nature such as fluorescence, degradability, shape.
“But we add engineered features such as magnetisation and biological activity to come up with a the proof-of-concept behind our bio-hybrid, magnetically propelled microrobots.
“We are still in early days of development since any such robotic system would need to be either completely and safely degraded, or it will need to be removed or excreted from the body after it has finished its work.
“But nevertheless, our work provides the first ever example of how this could be possibly achieved by degradation.
“The potential of these bots for controlled navigation in hard-to-reach cavities of the human body makes them promising miniaturised robotic tools to diagnose and treat diseases which is minimally invasive.”