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Reuters / Eric Gaillard
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Miniscule robots are set to start hunting down
cancerous cells in the human body and destroy them with their nanoweapons, new
research suggests. The nanobots to be used have had a tumor-recognition module
installed for the purpose.
While it appears like something out of a SciFi novel
at first, University of California's Davis Cancer Center has already published
the study in Nature
Communications and provides what is apparently a complete solution through
being able to both detect and destroy.
The nanoparticle is called “nanoporphyrin” and is
equipped to both hunt and destroy cancerous tumors in the human body. A
nanometer is one billionth of a meter meaning that the technology is extremely
small.
“Nanoporphyrins greatly increase the imaging
sensitivity for tumor detection through background suppression in blood, as
well as preferential accumulation and signal amplification in tumors,” the study
abstract notes.
“Furthermore, nanoporphyrins act as programmable
releasing nanocarriers for targeted delivery of drugs or therapeutic
radio-metals into tumours.”
Additionally, nanoporphyrins have the benefit of
making tumors more easily seen on MRI scans.
Cancer is one of the world’s most deadly diseases,
killing some 8.2 million people in 2012 with some 14.1 million being diagnosed
overall.
Currently, chemotherapy targets all of a certain type
of cell rather than specifically targeting cancerous cells, and this new
treatment could potentially circumvent this problem, leaving healthy cells
intact.
The idea first gained gravity in December last year
when South Korean scientists successfully developed a small robot that could
both detect and treat the deadly illness.
However,
at that point, the nanobots were only effective in treating ‘solid’ cancers.
While the idea previously existed it has been difficult to realize because of
the expense and difficulty in manufacturing in large quantities.
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