Researchers from Polytechnique Montréal, Université de Montréal and McGill University have just achieved a spectacular breakthrough in cancer research. They have developed new nanorobotic agents capable of navigating through the bloodstream to administer a drug with precision.
Professor Sylvain Martel is holder of the Canada Research Chair in Medical Nanorobotics and the Director of the nanorobotics laboratory at Polytechnique Montreal, where he studies medical applications of nanotechnology. Martel and his team have demonstrated major progress with a new technology that could revolutionize cancer treatment by using guided micro-transporters to deliver drugs. Thus cancerous cells can be locally targeted and then stop their growth.
This breakthrough in cancer-fighting research would ditch chemotherapy for nanorobots that fight cancer inside the human body. This research was published in the prestigious journal Nature Nanotechnology in an article titled “Magneto-aerotactic bacteria deliver drug-containing nanoliposomes to tumour hypoxic regions.” The article notes the results of the research done on mice, which were successfully administered nanorobotic agents into colorectal tumours.
“These legions of nanorobotic agents were actually composed of more than 100 million flagellated bacteria — and therefore self-propelled — and loaded with drugs that moved by taking the most direct path between the drug’s injection point and the area of the body to cure,” explains Professor Martel “The drug’s propelling force was enough to travel efficiently and enter deep inside the tumours.”
When they enter a tumour, the nanorobotic agents can detect in a wholly autonomous fashion the oxygen-depleted tumour areas, known as hypoxic zones, and deliver the drug to them. This hypoxic zone is created by the substantial consumption of oxygen by rapidly proliferative tumour cells. Hypoxic zones are known to be resistant to most therapies, including radiotherapy. But gaining access to tumours by taking paths as minute as a red blood cell and crossing complex physiological micro-environments does not come without challenges. So Professor Martel and his team used nanotechnology to do it.
To move around, bacteria used by Professor Martel’s team rely on two natural systems; a kind of compass created by the synthesis of a chain of magnetic nanoparticles allows them to move in the direction of a magnetic field, while a sensor measuring oxygen concentration enables them to reach and remain in the tumour active regions. By harnessing these two transportation systems and by exposing the bacteria to a computer-controlled magnetic field, researchers showed that these bacteria could perfectly replicate artificial nanorobots of the future designed for this kind of task.
For more detail: Nanobots Fight Cancerous Cells
