New cancer-hunting ‘nano-robots’ to seek and destroy tumours

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It sounds like a scene from a nanorobots cancer detection fiction novel — an army of tiny weaponised robots travelling around a human body, hunting down malignant tumours and destroying them from within. But research in Nature Communications today from the University of California Davis Cancer Centre shows the prospect of that being a realistic scenario may not be far off. Inan estimated This year, cancer surpassed cardiovascular diseases to become the leading cause of death in Australia; 40, Australians died as a nanorobots cancer detection of cancer last year.

A nanometre is a very small unit of length, just one billionth of a metre. Nanotechnology looks at building up incredibly tiny, nano-level structures for different functions and applications.

Nanorobots cancer detection such nanoparticle-based application is the development of precise cancer diagnostic technology and safe, efficient tumour treatment. The only problem is nanoparticles must be tailored to specific jobs. They can be time-consuming and expensive to research and build.

So how do nanoparticles work? They can be made using inorganic or organic components. Each has different properties:. Nanoporphyrin is only nanometres in size. Each molecule contains organic compounds nanorobots cancer detection porphyrins. Porphyrins can occur naturally, the best-known being heme, the pigment in red nanorobots cancer detection cells. Functional nanoparticle processes can be similar to those of an armed nano-robot. For example, when a tumour-recognition module is installed in a delivery nano-robot organic particle nanorobots cancer detection, the armed drug-loaded nano-robot particles can target and deliver the drug into tumour tissue.

They kill only those cells, while being harmless to surrounding healthy cells and tissues. If a tumour-recognition module is installed in a probe nano-robot inorganic particlethe armed nano-robot particles can get into tumour nanorobots cancer detection and activate a measurable signal to help doctors better diagnose tumours.

It has been a huge challenge to integrate these functions on the one nanoparticle. The production of nanoporphyrin is an efficient strategy in the development of multifunctional, integrated nanoparticles. The same strategy could be used to guide further versatile nanoparticle platforms to reduce nanomedicine costs, develop personalised treatment plans and produce self-assessing nanomedicines.

Jason Liu does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By continuing to use our website you consent to all cookies in accordance with nanorobots cancer detection cookie policy.

They have cancer in their sights. This website uses cookies This website uses cookies to improve user experience.

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Cancer treatment modalities using macroscopic drug delivery methods like chemotherapy, thermal-therapy and to an extent radiotherapy have had high cure rates but are often accompanied by severe side effects.

For instance Chemotherapy uses chemicals, which selectively kill rapidly diving cells. Although a lot of varieties of cancer exhibit this feature, healthy cells like in hair, bone marrow and digestive tract, are also fatally affected.

Recent breakthrough in targeted treatment for deadly diseases have led to the invention of molecular machines, called Nanorobots. Introduction of Nanorobots in controlled and targeted drug delivery has revolutionized medicine with special interest in cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Nanorobots, unlike their macro or even milli counterparts are not actually machines with moving parts and conventional control systems with microprocessors. Rather these are made with organic material and intelligence is programmed into the units via genetic modification of their building blocks.

Most nanorobots structurally consist of a sensing agent and a payload. The sensing agent could be one or more chemical strands, each of which are activated by a distinct feature in the targeted cell.

Similar to AND logic gates, when all the sensing agents are activated, the nanobot delivers the payload to the targeted cell. Further, the payload could consist of a drug or a fluorescent tag, depending on the application, viz.

Since these molecular delivery trucks can be programmed to release their payload only when the targeted cell is in correct diseased state, they achieve a specificity that few other treatment techniques can match.

Several classes of nanorobots have been invented lately. These devices were made of a series of DNA strands linked in 2D chains and thereby folded into 3D structures, that could selectively open and close.

Each bot carries two molecular payloads: The sensing agent is called an Aptamer, a molecule that recognizes the surface of a particular cancer cell. Upon recognition, the container dissolves, and payload penetrates the diseased cell initiating a self-destruct sequence in the cell. Since identification of a sensing agent that activates for a single cell type is an arduous task, Rudchenko et al [ 2 ] improved upon the concept by using multiple simple molecules chained to form a robot.

These were designed to seek a specific set of blood cells and tag them. This would in principle also allow for treatment and killing of specific cells. The advantage of this technique is identification of cells that do not possess a single distinctive feature.

Since the surface receptor or sensing agent is made up of multiple DNA strands, it spares similar healthy cells. On cells where all components receptors are attached, the robot is functional and results in tagging of the cell. A similar breakthrough was made by Park et al [ 3 ] concurrently in Korea called Bacteriobot, where non-toxic bacteria, salmonella in this case, are genetically modified to attract chemicals released by cancer cells. These nanobots actively seek cancer cells and deliver drugs to them.

The bacteria are engineered to have receptors, which bind to biochemicals secreted by diseased tissue; thus allowing the bacteria to diagnose cancer, and move towards the cell using flagella. Currently this technique is limited to detecting solid cancers like in breast or colorectal tumors, but it has potential to treat other tumors as well. Nanorobots have been shown to have high potential in-vitro experiments. Next steps would be scaling these devices for in-vivo testing in mice and human tissue.

In-vitro testing in petri dishes already required billion devices, which would scale to several trillions for these to be feasible cancer treatment modalities.

Nonetheless the positive results in nanorobots have brought in new hope to cancer research. Nanorobots in Cancer Treatment Cancer treatment modalities using macroscopic drug delivery methods like chemotherapy, thermal-therapy and to an extent radiotherapy have had high cure rates but are often accompanied by severe side effects. References [1] Douglas, Shawn M. Template adapted from Sergey Karayev.