Tiny magnetic robots could treat bleeds in the brain

Researchers have created nanoscale robots which could be used to manage bleeds in the brain caused by aneurysms.?The development could enable precise, relatively low-risk treatment of brain aneurysms, which cause around 500,000 deaths globally each year.

The medical condition – a blood-filled bulge on a brain artery that can rupture and cause fatal bleeds – can also lead to stroke and disability.

The study points to a future where tiny robots could be remotely controlled to carry out complex tasks inside the human body – such as targeted drug delivery and organ repair – in a minimally invasive way, researchers say.

The team, involving researchers from the University of Edinburgh, engineered magnetic nanorobots – about a twentieth the size of a human red blood cell – comprising blood-clotting drugs encased in a protective coating, designed to melt at precise temperatures. The work is published in the journal Small.

In lab tests, several hundred billion such bots were injected into an artery and then remotely guided as a swarm, using magnets and medical imaging, to the site of an aneurysm.

Magnetic sources outside the body then cause the robots to cluster together inside the aneurysm and be heated to their melting point, releasing a naturally occurring blood-clotting protein, which blocks the aneurysm to prevent or stem bleeding into the brain.

Zdroj obrázku: Jian Wu.