Skip to main content

BLOOD NANOBOTS

Call it another case of science fiction becoming scientific fact. Researchers have long dreamed of developing tiny robots that could roam about inside our bodies, delivering drugs with unprecedented precision, and hunting down and destroying cancer cells.
Scientists from China’s National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNT) and Arizona State University said they had developed robots a few hundred nanometers across — there are 25 million nanometers in an inch — and when they injected them into the bloodstream of mice, the nanorobots could shrink tumors by blocking their blood supply.
Image result for nanobots
The nanorobots were made from sheets of DNA rolled into tubes containing a blood-clotting drug. On the outside, the researchers placed a small DNA molecule that binds with a protein found only in tumors. When the bots reached tumors, this molecule attached to the protein, triggering the DNA tube to unroll and release the drug.
Most cancer drugs typically have nasty side effects because they can’t distinguish between cancer cells and healthy ones. The researchers showed that the nanorobots only targeted the tumors and didn’t cause clotting elsewhere in the body. They say this offers a promising future of cancer treatments free of side effects.
Such a device is very different from the human-scale bots that build our cars and vacuum our floors. But Guangjun Nie, one of the NCNT professors who developed the nanorobots, points out that they are able to sense their environment, navigate, and carry out mechanical tasks just like large robots.
The researchers are working with a biotech firm to commercialize the cancer-fighting nanobots. And Nie says this is just a taste of what DNA nanorobots could do.
In addition to boosting the effectiveness and lessening the side effects of powerful drugs, nanorobots loitering in our bloodstream could act as early warning systems for disease. And tiny wireless surgical tools could let doctors perform medical procedures without cutting people open.
Researchers have shown that these devices can precisely navigate to disease sites and can even penetrate deep into diseased tissue to deliver drugs more efficiently. When combined with biosensors like enzymes or antibodies, they can create much more sensitive ways to detect chemical signals of disease, because their movement means they bump into other molecules more frequently. 
Image result for nanobots 
The major upcoming challenges for these cutting-edge nanotechnologies is the development of life-size tests on animals and fully biodegradable versions. Nanotechnologies cause unknown and unpredictable properties to emerge, and thus researchers must carefully address the issue of risks and responsibilities in order to ensure safe use. Based on the current state-of-the-art knowledge about nanomaterial properties, it is still difficult to frame a new regulatory agenda specific to nanotechnologies, according to the recent European Union nanotechnology report.
Currently, several key regulatory instruments are being developed for the cosmetics and nanomaterials industries. The hope is that by starting to build a legal regulatory framework and by updating it as we better understand the properties of nanoparticles and how they work, we will be able to safely take advantage of new tools such as nanorobots and the exciting opportunities for high-precision work that they offer.
 
 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Unhackable Internet

  W hy it matters?   The internet is increasingly vulnerable to hacking; a quantum one would be unhackable. Quantum Computing    A quantum internet could be used to send unhackable messages, improve the accuracy of GPS, and enable cloud-based quantum computing. For more than twenty years, dreams of creating such a the quantum network have remained out of reach in large part because of the difficulty to send quantum signals across large distances without loss.   Now, Harvard and MIT researchers have found a way to correct for signal loss with a prototype quantum node that can catch, store and entangle bits of quantum information. The research is the missing link towards a practical quantum internet and a major step forward in the development of long-distance quantum networks.   The U.S Department of Energy (DoE) explains how a quantum link will make it happen through two quantum phenomenon: the first is quantum entanglement, where two-particle ...

Impact of Social Media on Business

Watch out for that bird! Imagine you are skydiving, you are visiting one of the most beautiful countries in the world and you want to share that experience with your loved ones and friends. Why not send a postcard? Oh wait, you’re already back from the trip by the time that postcard has reached, or it got lost in the mail. If only there was an alternative. This isn’t 1990. You have a platter of platforms to share your adventure. Webster’s dictionary defines social media as-“ forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos).”In simple words, social media, are various public platforms where people can share their views, stories, etc. with the help of various mediums. Starting with websites such as MySpace, Orkut, and Facebook, etc. it is now estimated that there are about 200 social media websites in ...

Pegasus Spyware: Flying Through The Air

 Hundreds of millions of people can't imagine life without their smartphones. Almost every aspect of their daily lives, from the most mundane to the most intimate, is within easy reach and hearing distance of their smartphones. Only few people realize that their phones may be used as surveillance devices, with someone hundreds of miles away secretly extracting their messages, photographs, and location while also activating their microphone and recording them in real time. Such capabilities are present in Pegasus, a spyware produced by NSO Group, an Israeli maker of mass surveillance weapons. What is Pegasus? Pegasus is a hacking software – or spyware – that is developed, marketed and licensed to governments around the world by the Israeli company NSO Group. It has the capability to infect billions of phones using either iOS or Android operating systems. The spyware is named after Pegasus, the white winged horse from Greek mythology. It is named so because it "flies through the...