Project description
Micro/nanorobots for medical applications
Micro/nanorobots have immense potential in medicine, including targeted drug delivery, precision microsurgery, and diagnosis. Success in the introduction of medical micro/nanorobots relies on the development of efficient and safe propulsion mechanisms for navigation in the bloodstream. The objective of this EU-funded proposal is to develop new wireless micro/nanorobotic systems using acoustic and magnetic actuation modalities. The research will address fundamental aspects of the application of micro/nanorobots in animal models, and results will be tested in 3D microfluidic and zebrafish disease models.
Objective
Micro/nanorobots can transform many aspects of medicine by enabling tasks, such as delivering drugs or genes precisely to targeted areas, transducing force on individual cells or tissues, performing biopsies, and facilitating non-invasive surgeries. Numerous propulsion mechanisms have been developed, but their low propulsion speed, lack of biocompatibility, and poor navigation capabilities have limited their use. The objective of this proposal is to develop wireless micro/nanorobots using acoustic and magnetic actuation modalities that will be used to navigate in microfluidics and zebrafish disease models to help better understand and treat diseases. The combination of ultrasound and magnetic fields is capable of overcoming the limitations encountered using a single actuation technique, and both are used extensively in clinical diagnostics and therapeutics. This proposal is divided into three research areas. 1) To date, no systematic studies have been conducted utilizing micro/nanorobotics on living animals. The research will address many of the fundamental challenges of using micro/nanorobots in living animals, followed by testing in microfluidics, 3D arbitrarily-shaped fluidic devices, and the vasculature of zebrafish embryos. Propulsion will be studied in the direction of and against blood flow, a 3D propulsion will be developed, and a swarm of nanorobots will be studied. 2) A platform will be developed that involves the trapping and manipulation of nanorobots in an animal model, such as zebrafish embryos. 3) We will develop an active drug delivery platform combined with other methods to study numerous disease models using the models based on live zebrafish embryos. We believe the results of the proposed research will have a significant impact in the field.
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Funding Scheme
ERC-STG - Starting GrantHost institution
8092 Zuerich
Switzerland