The technology has been successfully tested in realistic vessel models and in large animals and could pave the way for novel therapies in the future.
Keystone-SDA
Researchers at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich have created a microrobot to fight diseases inside the body. Scientists can control the device, which is less than two millimetres in width, through blood vessels to deliver essential drugs.
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The tiny robot has not yet been tested on humans. However, it worked in tests on pigs and a sheep, the researchers reported on Thursday in the journal Science.
Medical research has been trying for some time to develop methods to deliver drugs exactly where they are needed, ETH Zurich said in a press release. Today, many diseases, such as strokes or tumours, require high doses of drugs to be administered and distributed throughout the body, and this increases the risk of side effects.
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Microrobots could one day deliver drugs inside the body
The new robot is designed to solve this problem. It consists of a spherical gel capsule in which medication can be embedded. The researchers have equipped this capsule with iron oxide nanoparticles that can be controlled from the outside using magnetic fields.
Heat releases drug
According to ETH Zurich, the researchers combined three different magnetic navigation strategies with which they can navigate the robot in all regions of head arteries.
“It’s incredible how much blood is pumped through our vessels and at what speed. Our navigation system has to be able to withstand all of this,” Fabian Landers, ETH Zurich researcher and main author of the study, said in the press release.
At the destination, the capsule is then heated by a high-frequency magnetic field, causing the gel structure to dissolve and release the medication.
To enable doctors to follow how the capsule moves, the researchers have also equipped it with a contrast agent. They used tantalum nanoparticles, which are frequently used in medicine, but are more difficult to control because they are heavier.
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Switzerland – where the robots of tomorrow are born
Translated from German by DeepL/sb
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