Shape-Morphing Microrobots Deliver Drugs to Cancer Cells | Headline Science — Transcript
Full transcript
- 0:06Chemotherapy successfully treats many forms of cancer, but the side effects can wreak
- 0:11havoc on the rest of the body. Delivering drugs directly to cancer cells could help
- 0:16reduce these unpleasant symptoms. Now, in a proof-of-concept study, researchers reporting
- 0:21in ACS Nano have made fish-shaped microrobots that are guided with magnets to cancer cells
- 0:27in a petri dish, where a pH change triggers them to open their mouths and release their
- 0:32chemotherapy cargo. To develop these devices, Jiawen Li, Li Zhang, Dong Wu and colleagues
- 0:38began by 4D printing microrobots using a pH-responsive hydrogel. 4D-printing creates 3D-printed objects
- 0:46that change shape in response to certain stimuli, in this case, the acidic pH of tumors. They
- 0:53made shape-morphing microrobots that looked like a fish . . . ,
- 0:57crab . . . , or butterfly. Then, they placed the microrobots
- 1:02in a suspension of iron oxide nanoparticles to make them magnetic. The researchers used
- 1:08magnets and pH changes to make the microrobots perform different tasks. For example, the
- 1:14crab gripped a microparticle . . . , transported it . . . and released it. A fish-shaped microrobot
- 1:23had an adjustable “mouth” that opened and closed, allowing the team to load the
- 1:27fish’s mouth with a chemotherapy drug. They steered the fish through artificial blood
- 1:32vessels to reach cancer cells at a specific region of a petri dish. When they lowered
- 1:38the pH of the surrounding solution -- making it more acidic -- the fish opened its mouth
- 1:43to release a chemotherapy drug, shown here in red, which killed the cells closest to
- 1:47the fish. The researchers say, before the microrobots can be used for cancer treatment,
- 1:53they need to be made even smaller to navigate real blood vessels, and a suitable imaging
- 1:58method must be identified to track their movements in the body.
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