Scientists have worked for many years to incorporate advances in robotics into delicate medical procedures. They have already given us tiny devices that are capable of injecting medicine into the human eye or working in hard-to-reach areas of the body. And now they have developed a way to fight cancer using a magnetized swarm of microscopic robots.
Researchers at the Hamburg-based Phillips Innovative Technologies Center in Germany have invented a method to individually control each individual robot in this swarm and have learned how to assign them various tasks using magnetic fields. The authors presented their findings on February 15 in the Journal Science Robotics.
Previously, they could not accurately control microscopic devices, since they all behaved the same under the influence of the same magnetic field. “Our method can allow complex manipulations to be performed within the human body,” lead author Jürgen Ramer told Live Science.
Scientists now propose to use their controlled army of microscopic robots to deliver anti-cancer radioactive "seeds" exactly to the tumor. Treating cancer with this method will help maintain healthy tissue and reduce harmful side effects. It can also be used to create medical implants that change over time as a person recovers, the researchers said.