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Nanobots To Fight Cancer

8 Jun 2014
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First knowing that what "nano" designates, which will help us to get the idea of how small the technology is, that bio-engineers are dealing with.
1 Nano meter= 1/109 meter.
The bots are 5 to 500 nano-meters (or around 100 to 10’000 times smaller than a human hair).
 So, no doubt the technique is very sophisticated. MIT researcher Sangeeta bhatia and Geoffrey von Maltzahn are working with this.


Seeing the side effects that are caused by treatment process, the bio-engineer are searching for more healthy alternative. Though previously there was a little bigger version of nanobots called Microbots they were controlled through changing direction of magnetic field, but Nanobots are all automated and when injected into the body through blood stream, they search for the malignant tumors,
though significant number of bot didn't make up to the target, but the ones which meets the target started heating the tissue through laser, then a second wave of nanobot are released which combine with the damaged tissue. Most important part is that it can target over 40 times higher doses of chemotherapeutics to tumors.


Sources- http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v10/n7/full/nmat3049.html

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First knowing that what "nano" designates, which will help us to get the idea of how small the technology is, that bio-engineers are dealing with. 1 Nano meter= 1/109 meter. The bots are 5 to 500 nano-meters (or around 100 to 10’000 times smaller than a human hair).  So, no doubt the technique is very sophisticated. MIT researcher Sangeeta bhatia and Geoffrey von Maltzahn are working with this. Seeing the side effects that are caused by treatment process, the bio-engineer are searching for more healthy alternative. Though previously there was a little bigger version of nanobots called Microbots they were controlled through changing direction of magnetic field, but Nanobots are all automated and when injected into the body through blood stream, they search for the malignant tumors, though significant number of bot didn't make up to the target, but the ones which meets the target started heating the tissue through laser, then a second wave of nanobot are released which combine with the damaged tissue. Most important part is that it can target over 40 times higher doses of chemotherapeutics to tumors. Gold nano-particles (shown below in blue), would passively accumulate in the tumor. then heating the nano-particles using a laser, thereby causing damage to the tumor tissue. The second wave of nano-particles (shown below in red) were engineered to bind to the damaged tissue, and would therefore accumulate at higher numbers there. Sources- http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v10/n7/full/nmat3049.html