Tiny robots thinner than a human hair could help fight cancer tumours, reveals study
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TINY robots thinner than a human hair could help fight cancer tumours, a study has found. Scientists have crafted special 3D-printed microbots able to directly take drugs to cancer cells. They are only 30 microns — thousands of a millimetre — in diameter, and can easily turn from solid to liquid and back.
![[Tiny robots could help fight cancer tumours]](https://www.thesun.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/leukaemia-white-blood-cell-mitochondria-957664664.jpg?strip=all&w=960)
They can survive stomach acid and would pass out of the body in urine. A trial in mice has already helped to shrink the size of bladder tumours. A test on humans is now hoped for in the long term. Researcher Wei Gao, of Caltech University in the US, said: “Rather than putting a drug into the body and letting it diffuse everywhere, now we can guide our microrobots directly to a tumour site and release the drug in a controlled and efficient way.
“We think this is a very promising platform for drug delivery and precision surgery. “Looking to the future, we could evaluate using this robot as a platform to deliver different types of therapeutic payloads or agents for different conditions. “In the long term, we hope to test this in humans.”.
