Going Deeper

Trying to get treatments to a precise location in the body is a bit like navigating an intricate maze of tunnels, with a blindfold and no map. Microrobots are miniature devices developed to cruise through the body and deliver drugs to specific hard-to-reach places in the body, but covering much distance is a real challenge. A new approach uses endoscopy – the common technique that slips a camera tube down the throat and into the body – to deposit the bots with a head start, and then uses magnetic forces to take them the rest of the way. The microrobots (left, from the outside) contain magnetic particles (right, blue) and stem cells (pink). After the microrobots are inserted, researchers view their motion by ultrasound, steering the flexible shapes accurately through the body’s tiny crevices. This combined approach could light the way for custom treatments to be directed to precise targets.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image adapted from work by Ben Wang and Kai Fung Chan, and colleagues
• Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
• Image copyright held by and reproduced with permission from the AAAS
• Published in Science Robotics, March 2021