Scientists Develop Tiny Drug-Delivering Robot Beads

Scientists have developed tiny bead-shaped robots for more precise delivery of medication in the body.

Researchers from Drexel University in Philadelphia developed the magnetic robot beads or so-called "microswimmers" in hopes of delivering targeted medicines or perform surgeries on a small, non-invasive scale.

"We believe microswimmer robots could one day be used to carry out medical procedures and deliver more direct treatments to affected areas inside the body," U Kei Cheang, postdoctoral research fellow at Drexel's College of Engineering and co-author of the study, told DrexelNow.

"They can be highly effective for these jobs because they're able to navigate in many different biological environments, such as the blood stream and the microenvironment inside a tumor."

The minute bead-shaped robots are magnetically linked to one another to form chains of different lengths. The chains are controlled by an external rotating magnetic field. The faster the field rotates, the faster the robots move. By increasing the frequency of the rotation, the chain will break up into shorter segments, which move independently of each other.

According to the scientists, longer chains can swim faster when rotated compared with shorter ones, which they discovered by starting with a three-bead swimmer and adding longer ones as they progress.

Once the beads separated, the magnetic field will be adjusted to move the three- and four-bead robots in different directions. Then by tweaking the field, the magnetic beads will simply reconnect.

"If you have these simple geometries as building blocks, you can put them together to make more complicated shapes that can do more things," Henry Fu, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Utah, said in an interview with Live Science.

The research is a key component of a larger project where Drexel, in partnership with 10 medical and research institutions around the world, will develop a technology that will help perform minimally invasive surgery on blocked arteries, DrexelNow reports.

The study was published online in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.