Nanorackets in the stomach

Scientists used nanobots with micro-motors for the first time
for the delivery of medicines inside a living organism

DailyTechInfo based on Gizmag materials: Nanobot micromotors deliver medical payload in living creature for the first timeResearchers from the University of California at San Diego have presented evidence to the whole world that microscopic machines created by them can move inside a living organism and deliver a cargo of medicines to the right place without having any adverse effects on this organism.

The micro-motor has a chemical nature, it promotes nanobots due to gas bubbles released during the reaction between the liquid inside the body and the material stored in the engine. And as it has long been established in science, the first living beings to experience the effects of nanobots were long-suffering experimental rodents.

The tiny robots involved in the experiment were shaped like a tube, about 20 micrometers long and 5 micrometers in diameter. As soon as these tubes, made of a special polymer and coated with a thick enough layer of zinc, were introduced into the digestive tract of the animal and reached its stomach, zinc began to react with hydrochloric acid, which is part of the digestive juices. The hydrogen released at the same time escaped from the inner cavity of the nanobot tubes, turning them into a kind of miniature rockets.

Moving at a speed of about 60 micrometers per second, the nanobots left the limits of the stomach, where another mechanism embedded in them worked, allowing the nanobots to gain a foothold on the intestinal walls and release nanoparticles from drugs that fell on the intestinal tissue. According to the information collected as a result of the experiments, the nanobots "deployed" in the intestinal tract of the experimental animal remained attached to the intestinal walls for 12 hours even despite the animal's food intake, which is proof of their effectiveness.

After that, the scientists made a thorough analysis of the tissues of the stomach and intestines of the animal. This analysis showed that the presence of nanobots did not cause tissue damage and an increase in the concentration of toxic substances in the body, because zinc in small quantities is a trace element necessary for a living organism. And the other results obtained by scientists showed their full compliance with expectations.

It should be noted that the success of Californian scientists is only the first step towards the creation of drug delivery technologies using specially designed nanorobots that will be used in relation to people in the not so distant future. Of course, scientists will need years of work and a lot of experiments before the permission of the controlling state bodies to use such technologies on humans will be obtained. But when this happens, these technologies will move from the category of science fiction to the category of everyday things and will become a safe alternative to the currently existing traditional methods of delivering large doses of drugs.

Manufacturing and characterization of PEDOT/Zn micromotors
(PEDOT – poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene))(a) Schematic representation of the promotion and introduction of micromotors into the tissue in the mouse stomach in vivo.

(b) Manufacture of micromotors using polycarbonate membrane templates:
   (I) formation of microtubules from polyethylene dioxithiophene
   (II) application of the inner layer of zinc
   (III) dissolution of the membrane and release of micromotors.
(c) An image of micromotors obtained using a scanning microscope (left) and elementary zinc, which is part of micromotors, obtained using energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (right). The division of the scale corresponds to 5 microns.
(d) I-IV – images obtained by slow-motion photography (with an interval of 1 s) of the progress of micromotors in gastric juice at body temperature (37 ° C). The division of the scale corresponds to 20 microns.
Figure from the article by Wei Gao et al. Artificial Micromotors in the Mouse's Stomach: A Step towards in Vivo Use of Synthetic Motors, published in open access in ACS Nano – VM.

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