By R. Wulf; on AskaPatientNews.substack.com
The year is 2033. You’re sitting in the doctor’s office when your worst fears are confirmed. Your doctor shows you an X-ray with a small but suspicious mass. You're mentally preparing for surgery, and possibly months of chemotherapy, so you’re surprised when your doctor pulls out a syringe. “This should take care of it,” she says. “You’ll feel a slight pinch, and then we’ll check on it next week to see that it’s gone down.”
What is the mystery drug in this syringe? Chances are, it's the same thing used in chemo and immunotherapy treatments today, but with an incredible helper: nanorobots. Thousands of microscopic bots programmed to seek out each individual cancer cell and destroy it, leaving everything else intact.
Nanorobots: The term brings to mind tiny metal machines vaguely resembling R2-D2 crawling around inside your body. It sounds like something right-out of a sci-fi movie (remember The Fantastic Voyage?), but researchers are already developing nanorobots that have the potential to perform countless medical tasks. And they’re something that may be commonplace within the next decade.
Nanorobots behave just like regular robots, but on a very tiny scale. Don’t worry, they’re not what you think. In fact, there’s no metal or fancy electronics at work anywhere in these microscopic robots. Perhaps what’s surprising is that these little "machines" are made up by linking together two simple molecules: DNA and peptides (protein building blocks that can form shapes and even execute simple movements).
Yes, that’s right. Nanorobots are made of the same ingredients that fuel everything that happens in your body. This is what makes "Artificial Life Forms" like nanorobots so adept at performing medical tasks.
Think of a mechanical robot. To get the robot to work, you need to start with a code that tells the robot what to do. Usually, we use numbers or characters that the computer can ‘read’ and translate into what we want it to do. DNA works exactly like a computer code. It can be unraveled into a very long string of repeating molecules we’ve shortened to calling A, G, C, and T that our bodies ‘read’ just like a computer code. Changing the order of the A’s, G’s, T’s, and C’s changes the code. Next, we need the machinery to perform the tasks. The peptides are the machinery. They can respond to the commands by the DNA and set the nanorobots in motion. No batteries required!
Each nanorobot needs to be programmed to do specific tasks once inside the body. How well they perform the tasks though, depends on how the DNA-Peptide "hybrid molecules" are designed.
A recent hybrid molecule, co-developed by University of Southern Denmark and Kent State University, is considered to be a design breakthrough: it links three-stranded DNA structures with three-stranded peptide structures, creating an artificial hybrid molecule that combines the strengths of both. The discovery may help jump-start a massive innovation boom of nanorobots and other types of artificial life forms for the medical field. Just like how experimenting with semiconductor chips turned computers from wall-to-wall machines in the 1960’s to tiny but powerful smartphones, creating hybrid DNA-Peptide molecules will make nanorobots efficient and practical enough for commercial use.
Research labs around the world are publishing inventions of new nano-component designs with the help of hybrids. Some have tiny peptide "drills" that can penetrate the surface of individual cells. These might one day be used to inject medications cell-by-cell. Others are developed with spherical vesicles that can carry cell-sized dosages. Still others might come with specialized peptide "feelers" that can identify which cells they need to target and/or deliver the medication to. This is all part of the emerging practice of precision medicine, in which treatments are personalized for each individual patient. In the not-too-distant future, nanorobots may be behind everything from disease diagnosis to treatment and cure.
