HackingTheUniverse

Tiny anti-cancer drug delivery capsules are guided to a target inside a human body using an MRI system.

Localized delivery of an anti-cancer drug by remote-controlled microcarriers – [polymtl.ca]

Soon, drug delivery that precisely targets cancerous cells without exposing the healthy surrounding tissue to the medication’s toxic effects will no longer be an oncologist’s dream but a medical reality, thanks to the work of Professor Sylvain Martel, Director of the Nanorobotics Laboratory at Polytechnique Montréal.

Known for being the world’s first researcher to have guided a magnetic sphere through a living artery, Professor Martel is announcing a spectacular new breakthrough in the field of nanomedicine. Using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, his team successfully guided microcarriers loaded with a dose of anti-cancer drug through the bloodstream of a living rabbit, right up to a targeted area in the liver, where the drug was successfully administered. This is a medical first that will help improve chemoembolization, a current treatment for liver cancer.

Micromachines Steered Through the Blood – [fightaging.org]

Nanotechnology can be used to build assemblies of designed molecules that seek out specific cells – such as cancer cells – but an alternative approach to targeted therapies is to build machinery large enough to be controlled from outside the body, such as the microcarriers demonstrated here: “Soon, drug delivery that precisely targets cancerous cells without exposing the healthy surrounding tissue to the medication’s toxic effects will no longer be an oncologist’s dream but a medical reality …