Whether they’re sneaking between cells or turning cockroaches into living 8-bit computers, nanobots are insanely fascinating. Now, they’re about to become an army of impossibly small weaponised robots, swarm into the human body, hunt down malignant tumours and destroy them once and for all.
New research from the University of California’s Davis Cancer Center published in Nature Communications has enabled doctors to develop a nanoparticle called “nanoporphyrin”, which will both hunt down and destroy cancerous tumours within the human body. This was achieved by installing a tumour-recognition module in a nanobot, which would inject drugs directly into the affected cells.
Unlike standard chemotherapy, which simply blasts all of a certain type of cell and often ends up doing more damage than good, this new treatment leaves healthy cells completely unharmed.
Phys.org has an in-depth, technical explanation of how the system works, so head over and check it out. [Phys.org]
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