Researchers at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have made a groundbreaking advancement by creating grain-sized soft robots, controllable through magnetic fields for precision drug delivery. This innovative technology has the potential to revolutionize therapies in the future.
While this kind of small-scale biotechnology is not novel, the fact it has four compartments that can carry and release different medications is, reports NewAtlas.
"In this work, we have proposed a millimeter-scale soft robot, which can be actuated by alternating magnetic fields to dispense four types of drugs with reprogrammable drug-dispensing sequence and dosage," MAE lead investigator, Assistant Professor Lum Guo Zhan, told New Atlas. "This drug-dispensing functionality is unprecedented for small-scale robots because the majority of such existing robots can at most transport one type of drug. While there exist rare miniature robots that can carry multiple drugs, such robots are unable to change their drug-dispensing sequence and dosage. These robots can't transport more than three types of drugs, selectively dispense their drugs, maintain their mobility, or release their drugs at multiple sites.
"In comparison, our soft robot has great potential to enable advanced targeted combination therapy, where four types of drugs must be delivered to various disease sites, each with a specific sequence and dosage of drugs."
Researchers said their work is inspired by the iconic 1960s film ‘Fantastic Voyage,’ in which a crew is miniaturized to repair damage within a scientist’s brain.
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Advanced smart magnetic composite materials, which include human-safe polymers and non-toxic magnetic microparticles, were used in the design of the grain-sized robot. This novel soft robot exhibits remarkable dexterity and can roll and crawl over obstacles quickly, in contrast to existing small robots that have trouble maintaining accurate orientations.
Although it has not yet undergone clinical testing, the robot has shown that it can travel through a variety of liquid viscosities that replicate the conditions it would encounter in a human body. At a pace of 0.30 mm to 16.5 mm per second, it was able to traverse to four distinct locations in lab testing and release a particular medicine at each location. Additionally, the engineers were able to control the apparatus to release a drug gradually over a period of eight hours. They think the robot could provide both immediate and continuous pharmaceutical delivery, depending on the patient's need.
"The roadmap towards realizing this goal is to first evaluate the performance of robots further with organ-on-chip devices and eventually conduct animal trials," Lum added. "We can perhaps complete this stage of research within the next two to five years’ time."
