Tiny Robots in Your Blood Could Save Your Life

It’s the stuff of science fiction: tiny robots travelling through your bloodstream to deliver life-saving medicines. However, science fiction often becomes science fact.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, have developed nanobots – or “microrollers” – that carry a payload of cancer-fighting drugs, and they can be directed to treat human breast cancer cells.

Metin Sitti and his team were inspired by the white blood cells in the human body, which move along the walls of blood vessels, against the flow of blood. They designed the microrollers to be spherical in shape, and created them from glass microparticles.

In a controlled test, the bots were exposed to healthy and cancerous tissue, then activated with a UV light to release their medicinal cargo.

They recorded that the devices were precise and were more effective than contemporary cancer drugs – which tend to target both healthy and cancerous cells, which cause as much harm as they heal.

The scientists hope to refine the technology to be more widely applicable, but it is still in its infancy.