While we are living in an unprecedented level of digital disruption, we still face significant threats and challenges to our health and livelihoods. Everything from intensifying hurricanes due to climate change and increasing levels of income inequality will likely be issues that we confront in the decades to come. However, nanobots are perhaps not the most known digital innovations of this era, but they will become more and more visible now, especially considering cancer treatment!
Another key challenge that we face today is finding cures to devastating diseases—specifically cancer. The statistics are grim and researchers all around the world are working hard to find a way to develop a cure for cancer. While we aren’t quite there yet, one promising technology that may be able to help cure cancer are nanobots. Nanobots are extremely exciting pieces of technology that are already being used for cancer treatment. Yes, the jury is still out on whether nanorobotics will become a cheap, yet extremely effective way to treat grave illnesses. Nevertheless, this is a technology that is certainly worth monitoring in the years to come and cancer will have a new enemy which is called nanobots.
Nanobots: A Brief Description
As a basic starting point, nanobots are tiny devices (ranging in size from 0.1 to 10 micrometers) that are constructed out of nanoscale or molecular components. For the sake of comparison, a red blood cell is approximately 0.1 to 10 micrometers. The essential idea of nanorobotics (nanobots) is that these tiny devices carry out certain procedures and instructions to solve a certain problem—all at an extremely small scale. To put it another way, nanobots are machines that can build and manipulate things with an extremely high degree of precision at an atomic level.
Some of the potential applications of nanobots include medical imaging, information storage devices, smart windows and walls, and even connecting our brains to the Internet. Already, researchers have already made several significant advancements in the technical aspects of nanorobotics. For example, several different groups of researchers have developed a “high-speed, remote-controlled nanoscale version of a rocket by combining nanoparticles with biological molecules.” Physicists from the University of Mainz have developed the so-called “smallest engine ever created” from a solitary atom. For more details on these (and other) advancements, click here.
Taking the Fight to Cancer
We are still in the early days of nanorobotics, yet we have already seen the promise of nanobots being used to treat cancer. One of the most exciting studies came from researchers from Arizona State University and the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. These researchers injected nanobots into the bloodstream of mice, and these nanobots targeted blood vessels around cancerous tumors. The nanobots, by using their embedded blood clotting drugs to cut off these blood vessels’ blood supply, were able to shrink the tumors and inhibit their spread. They were able to precisely target cancerous tumors and do it much more effectively than a surgeon with a scalpel ever could.
Another study from earlier this year used a DNA nanorobot that successfully sought out breast cancer cells in mice and targeted a specific protein. The researchers used nanobots to lower levels of a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), which helps cancer cells proliferate uncontrollably. While the nanobot would need significantly more improvement before widespread use, it is yet another promising illustration of nanobots being used to treat cancer.
What Lies Ahead
Nanorobotics is tremendously exciting. That said, whether they are being used to treat cancer or create smart windows and walls, researchers need to overcome some significant challenges. For instance, researchers are still trying to determine an effective way to get these minuscule robots to travel to (and stay) at certain points in the body. Nanobots also need to avoid being expelled from the body by things like toxic or foreign bodies.
Once again, we are still in early innings. Researchers are going to need to invest a large amount of time, energy, and money into overcoming these challenges. There is no guarantee that the potential applications of nanorobotics will be available in our day-to-day lives.
But that said, the potential is there. Researchers have already made some significant progress, and it is likely that more is on the way. Whether you work in an industry that may be disrupted by nanorobotics or are simply interested in the technology, the next few years will certainly be fascinating.
