NANOROBOTICS - MEDICINE OF FUTURE
Recent technological developments indicate that doctor might one day start prescribing nanorobotics as pills for serious ailments !
Researchers in Havard University have recently developed nanoscale robots using DNA, to seek and destroy cancer cells. These tiny clam-shaped bots hold a dose of medicine inside them. They probe a body for cancerous cells and release the medicine only at such locations, leaving healthy cells untouched. This way, the efficacy of the drug is very high, as the treatment is focussed on affected areas.
|Cell targeting DNA nanorobot|
Researchers call DNA Origami to build the nanorobot. In an experiment they released millions of nanorobots in to health and cancerous human blood cells. After a few days they found that around the half of the leukaemia cells had been destroyed leaving healthy cells untouched. By adding more drugs and locks, the nanorobots can be used to vanquish almost all leukaemia cells in a patient's body.
Elsewhere researchers are exploring how a combination of nanorobots and stem cells can be used to regenerate dead cells in brain, retina and other vial part of the body. Stem cells are basic building blocks that are capable of producing new cells to regenerate damaged organs or nerves. Simply injecting stem cells into the body does not help so much, as the efficacy of the treatment is low. So researchers are trying to attach stem cells to nanofibres or nanorobots and then inject the combination precisely at the damaged location.
|Nanorobot attached to cell|
The ability of nanorobots to interact with basic building blocks of our body is likely to transform the face of disease detection and drug delivery.In future, it is believed that powerful drugs will be combined with nanorobots and injected into the body or may be prescribed even as capsule, to identify affected areas and release medicine effectively.