Only in cancer medicine do we aim to attack and kill legions of our own cells. But healthy bystander cells often get caught in deadly crossfire, which is why cancer treatments can cause severe side effects in patients.
Doctors know that we need smarter medicines to target the bad guys only. One hope is that tiny robots on the scale of a billionth of a metre can come to the rescue, delivering drugs directly to rogue cancer cells. To make these nanorobots, researchers in Europe are turning to the basic building blocks of life – DNA.
Today robots come in all shapes and sizes. One of the strongest industrial robots can lift cars weighing over two tons. But materials such as silicon are not so suitable at the smallest scales.
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VIDEO: ICREA Research Professor Samuel Sánchez (IBEC) explains how they have observed in vivo the collective movement of nanorobots view more
Credit: IBEC - CIC biomaGUNE
Nanobots are machines whose components are at the nano-scale (one millionth of a millimetre), and can be designed in such a way that they have the ability to move autonomously in fluids. Although they are still in the research and development phase, very significant advances are being made to make nanorobots a reality in the field of biomedicine. Their applications are very varied: from the identification of tumour cells, to the release of drugs in specific locations of the body. Nanorobots powered by catalytic enzymes are among the most promising systems because they are fully biocompatible and can make use of fuels already available in the body for their propulsion. However, understanding the collective behaviour of these nanorobots is essential to advance towards their use in clinica