Cancer Treatment News: DNA Nanorobots Effectively Target, Destroy Cancer Cells
Treating cancer may be soon safer as scientists have succeeded in using nanorobots to effectively look and directly administer drugs to cancer cells without causing damage to the healthy ones.
A study published in the journal Nature Biotechnology has revealed that researchers have successfully developed "DNA nanorobots" as a way to treat cancer effectively. As compared to the current cancer radiation treatment that bombards the whole body with radiation, nanorobots don't harm the healthy cells as they are made from DNA that has been pre-programmed to automatically look for and destroy cancer cells.
The DNA nanorobots were tested into mice carrying human breast cancer tumors. When the pre-prorammed DNA were injected to the subjects, it was discovered that they attached themselves to cancer cells within 48 hours. As the DNA nanorobots prevented blood from flowing into the cancer cells, they eventually died.
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In order to confirm if the DNA nanorobots can also deliver the same effect to larger animals, they were also tested on Bama miniature pigs. While nanorobots displayed the same results as seen on the tests done on mice, there are more clinical trials that need to be done before the treatment can be tried on humans. However, the team is optimistic that human cancer patients can eventually benefit from the DNA nanorobot technology.
"I think we are much closer to real, practical medical applications of the technology. Combinations of different rationally designed nanorobots carrying various agents may help to accomplish the ultimate goal of cancer research: the eradication of solid tumors and vascularized metastases. Furthermore, the current strategy may be developed as a drug-delivery platform for the treatment of other diseases by modification of the geometry of the nanostructures, the targeting groups and the loaded cargoes,"said Hao Yan, director of the ASU Biodesign Institute's Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics and the Milton Glick Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences.
