Extraordinary things happen by putting together sciences of different disciplines. And the combination of nanotechnology, robotics and medical science has led to the development of microscopic tools that can improve patient recoveries.
Nanobots
Nanobots are one example with enormous potential. In 1959, theoretical physicist Richard Feynman predicted that one day it would be possible to build machines consisting of only a few thousand atoms. The idea of nanobots were born in 1959 as an idea, but it was not until 1989 that it would be feasible. Thanks to the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope, IBM engineer Don Eigler became the first person to manipulate atoms. U.S. presidents Clinton and Bush supported the development of the technology in the early 2000s with funding for the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
Nanobots are robots with nanometric dimensions, comparable to the size of an atom. The main goal of nanorobotics is the manipulation of matter on an atomic scale, taking advantage of the extremely small scale, so that they can be introduced into different organic or inorganic bodies to observe, modify or repair the subject internally.
In 2015, scientists at the University of California introduced a medical load of nanobots that were programmed to occupy the intestinal tissue of a living organism, in this case the intestine of a mouse. Driven by a micro motor that runs on the gases in the mouse’s stomach, they demonstrated that the nanobots could provide medical treatment without causing any side effects.
In 2018, researchers from Hong Kong City University developed a magnetically powered nanobot that non-invasively delivers stem cells to a targeted tissue site. Magnetic fields are used to guide the nanobots within test mice and fish, and it was the first time nanobots were used in lived organisms.
Nano-repairs to heart tissue
According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, until the end of 2019 the top reason for deaths in the United States was due to heart conditions, accounting for 23.1% of deaths in the U.S. To combat the pervasiveness of heart health issues, different universities are dedicating their nanotechnology research efforts to treat heart problems.
For example, in 2015, scientists from the Texas Heart Institute (THI) built upon the studies conducted by biomolecular chemist Matteo Pasquali, in which he fabricated conductive fibers from carbon nanotubes. This principle was used at THI, proving that it can repair heart tissues damaged from pre-infarctions or infarctions, thus resuming the conductivity of the muscle. Preclinical tests were done on rodents, showing a conductivity recovery in the dead part of the impacted heart. When the carbon nanotubes were removed, the hearts again lost conductivity.
North Carolina State University is working on integrating nanobots into the process of administering stem cells to repair damaged tissues in cardiac cases. The use of stem cells by itself is a significant risk. Stem cells have the ability to travel to the damaged place and repair it, but at the same time they activate a clotting process, which could greatly complicate cardiovascular events.
The leader of the project, Ke Cheng, associate director of the Comparative Medical Institute and veterinarian, studied why coagulation in stem cells happens. It turned out to be a group called glycoproteins that cover the platelets, which is responsible for the clotting effect. Having discovered this, the team used nanobots for the creation of nano vesicles.
Nano vesicles generate a kind of skin on the cardiac stem cell to function as a GPS and conductor of the stem cells, indicating the location of the problem and avoiding the side effects, that in this case is the clotting effect. The trials took mice of two different groups, half with nano vesicles and the other half without them. Those mice with nano vesicles showed an improvement of 20% compared to the others.
Hearts are also susceptible to atherosclerosis, sometimes called the silent killer. This is the process by which fats, cholesterol and other substances accumulate inside and on the walls of the arteries, creating restriction in the blood flow to the rest of the body.
Researchers at the University of Georgia decided to create artificial nano particles, which emulate high-density lipoproteins (HDLs) cholesterol, the good kind of cholesterol, with the peculiarity of shielding them with MRI (iron oxide). Doing this permits MRIs to identify plaque accumulations in the arteries, and apply different treatments and face the disease in its earliest stage.
More and more, nanotechnology looks like a pioneering field of medicine. Being able to non-invasively investigate organs from the inside out and guide cells or nutrients with nano-sized robots is not longer science fiction. Nor is replacing minuscule tissues with artificial replacements. They are the product of a dream in the medicine field, but are now closer to being a legitimate treatment than ever.
