Descrizione del progetto
Micro/nanorobot per applicazioni mediche
I micro/nanorobot hanno un enorme potenziale in medicina, comprendendo la distribuzione mirata di farmaci, la microchirurgia di precisione e la diagnosi. Il successo nell’introduzione dei micro/nanorobot medici si basa sullo sviluppo di meccanismi di propulsione efficienti e sicuri per la navigazione nel flusso sanguigno. L’obiettivo di questa proposta finanziata dall’UE è quello di sviluppare nuovi sistemi micro/nanorobotici wireless utilizzando le modalità di attuazione acustica e magnetica. La ricerca affronterà gli aspetti fondamentali dell’applicazione dei micro/nanorobot in modelli animali e i risultati saranno testati in microfluidica 3D e modelli di malattia del pesci zebra.
Obiettivo
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.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
ERC-STG - Starting GrantIstituzione ospitante
8092 Zuerich
Svizzera