The use of bioinspired microrobots could allow medicine to develop more targeted treatments. In this study, microrobots were able to cure pneumonia in mice.
When we think of robots, we very quickly imagine the sci-fi movie androids. We then forget that, in many other forms, they can have real human utility. This is especially in medicine. In Naturea research team presents microrobots that could one day save lives.
This paper, published on September 22, 2022, demonstrates how these microrobots were able to swim to the infected lungs of mice to eliminate pathogens. And, not just any: those of bacterial pneumonia, a disease that can be fatal. Mice treated with this invention were completely rescued. The others are dead.
How are these little robots designed?
These microrobots are called “bioinspired”, since it is a natural functioning applied to engineering. They are composed of algae cells and their surface is covered with nanoparticles filled with antibiotics. These nanoparticles are polymer spheres, covered by membranes of neutrophils — a class of white blood cells.
This allows for a two-step action:
- The membranes from white blood cells neutralize the molecules of inflammation caused by the infection;
- Then the pulmonary infection – the pneumonia itself – can then be directly combated by the antibiotics inserted into the nanoparticles.
The microrobots naturally degrade in the process, without harm or toxic degradation to the body, due to their bio-inspired design.
Robots using more targeted drugs
The advantage of this method is that it is very precise: the drug does not circulate throughout the body, it goes directly where it needs to act. ” Our goal is to deliver drugs in a targeted manner to harder-to-reach parts of the body, such as the lungs. And we want to do it in a way that’s safe, easy, biocompatible and sustainable. “, explain the researchers on the University of San Diego website.
This strategy would therefore be much more effective than a traditional intravenous blood injection, where ” sometimes only a very small fraction of the antibiotics makes it to the lungs “. Due to the lack of precision of treatments of this type, “ many current antibiotic treatments for pneumonia do not work as well as needed, leading to very high death rates in the sickest patients “, detail the authors.
The results presented in this study demonstrate that, in mice, microrobots provide the precision needed to save more people infected with this disease. Of course, the experiment is currently limited to mice, which makes it impossible to use with humans. It will then be necessary to extend the tests to larger mammals and then to humans. But this successful study pushes the frontier of targeted treatments even further. Clearly, we are gradually approaching a potential use to save human lives.