How a submarine could save your life

An image from the 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage.

An image from the 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage.

Published Apr 22, 2015

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London – Scientists have developed a minuscule “submarine” that could be used to deliver drugs and other treatments to exactly where they are needed in the body.

The technology is a little like the idea portrayed in the 1966 Raquel Welch film Fantastic Voyage, where doctors were shrunk and placed in a miniature submarine to journey through blood vessels and remove a life-threatening blood clot from a man’s brain.

The new device – developed by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany, the University of Stuttgart, and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology – is a form of nanotechnology, where tiny particles are engineered to perform a range of functions.

The screw-shaped transporter, which is made of silica and nickel, is just 70 nanometres in diameter and 400 nanometres long (a nanometre is one-billionth of a metre).

It is so tiny – 100 times smaller than a blood cell – that it can pass through tissue and may even be able to penetrate cells.

The plan is for drugs, or even tiny doses of radiation, to be attached to the tip of the transporter (where there are tiny propellers).

The device would then be injected into the patient and guided along, using external handheld magnets, to where it is needed in the body.

Once in position, the magnets could be used to rotate the propellers to unload their cargo at the allotted target.

Such an approach would mean greater concentrations of the drug could reach where it is needed, therefore making treatments more effective and reducing side-effects.

It could also mean radiation is targeted more effectively.

The researchers say there are many medical applications for the technology.

In the eye, for example, they could be used to target therapy at a very precise location of the retina — the light sensitive patch at the back of the eye, which is currently very challenging to treat. Dr Gavin Jell, a lecturer in nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at University College London, believes nanotechnology has the potential to improve “almost every aspect of medicine”.

However, he adds: “There remain many challenges, including controlling how these nanoparticles interact with the body, so that they can reach their intended target.”

Meanwhile, scientists are working on a new way to deliver treatments that normally have to be injected.

Although many drugs can be taken orally, others such as insulin cannot, because they are broken down in the stomach before they can be absorbed further down the digestive system – and so need to be injected directly into the blood stream.

But many people are nervous about injections – and up to 10 percent of people have a needle phobia, according to the charity Anxiety UK.

Now the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has designed a new form of pill with an acrylic coating that dissolves only when it reaches the intestines, exposing tiny needles.

As the muscles in the intestine naturally contract to push food along, this forces the contents of the pill through the microneedles and into the tissue.

Studies have shown that these microneedles successfully injected insulin into the lining of the stomach, the small intestine and the colon.

The researchers say that the lack of pain receptors there would mean that the patient would feel nothing.

Daily Mail

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