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Spotlight December 2022: Fighting tumors with micro robots
When we, the DaNa team as operators of the website nanopartikel.info, write about nanobots, i.e. nanometre-sized machines, we point out that these machines belong to science fiction, may even remain a utopia – i.e. never realisable. On the significantly larger micro-scale, however, small machines are conceivable that could help in the therapy of diseases, e.g. cancer. Such an approach is now presented by S. Schürle from ETH Zurich, who is developing magnetically controllable microrobots. She is using naturally occurring bacteria that have a magnetic “core” and with the help of which they can be steered to the target as microrobots.
This approach is not entirely new in terms of the basic idea, but it is significantly improved by the Zurich working group because rotating magnetic fields are used to make the bacteria rotate. The impression is that the microrobots now work like micro-drilling machines and drill their way non-destructively between cells to get from blood vessels through the blood vessel wall to tumour cells. You can read about the results she has achieved and the new approaches S. Schürle is exploring on the ETH Zurich website and in the original publication cited there (Gwisai T, Mirkhani N, Christiansen MG, Nguyen TT, Ling V, Schuerle S: Magnetic torque-driven living microrobots for increased tumour infiltration, Science Robotics 26 October 2022, doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.abo0665)
Weitere Spotlights
Spotlight April 2021: Nanomaterials and Fake News – a commentary based on an example
In February 2021, the article “The invisible killer lurking in our consumer products” appeared, describing nanoparticles as a greater danger than Corona [1]. “The use of nanomaterials” would be “unregulated” and “nanomaterials are so small that they cannot be determined once they are part of a product”. So what is the truth of these statements? […]
Read moreSpotlight December 2020: Rethinking Nanosafety – Part II
In December we would like to draw attention to the special issue: Rethinking Nanosafety – Part II in small. In the July Spotlight we already presented Part I. This special issue “Rethinking Nanosafety – Part II” also features research papers by renowned scientists in the field of nanosafety research. The first part of this special […]
Read moreSpotlight March 2023: How can photovoltaics be made safe and sustainable?
Conventional photovoltaic systems often have only low efficiency, i.e. only a fraction of the solar energy is converted into electrical energy and made usable. For this reason, research is being conducted into innovative materials that can significantly increase the energy yield and thus also enable more electrical energy to be generated from renewable sources. However, […]
Read moreSpotlight November 2022: Photonics in nature and bioinspired designs
Science has always taken nature as a model and imitated it. If you look at the field of photonics, i.e. the use of optical technologies for information processing, transmission or storage, the colorful examples in the animal and plant world are perfect basic drawers for technical applications. While colors in nature are used either for […]
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