One of the most worrying issues for any modern society lies precisely in the need to put an end to certain diseases that many of its citizens face. Now it seems that we are much closer to ending, for example, with one of the most common such as cancer, a disease that could be eradicated with this technique in just 48 hours, or at least that's what the researchers who are already testing this new technology say.
To go into a little more detail, tell you that today this surprising investigation is being carried out jointly by staff from both the Arizona State University as the National Center for Nanoscience and Technology of China. As I said in the previous paragraph, the most interesting thing is that this new technique, basically consisting of an injection, has already been successfully tested in both mice and pigs, so the next step is to start testing with humans.
DNA nano-robots could kill tumors in humans
Before continuing and going into more detail, I would like to leave you with a very enlightening phrase about what has been achieved with this new technology and that appears in the paper published by the responsible for the development of the project:
Using tumor-bearing mouse models, we demonstrated that intravenously injected DNA nano-robots deliver thrombin specifically to tumor-associated blood vessels and induce intravascular thrombosis, leading to tumor necrosis and growth inhibition.
As you surely know, it is not the first time that nano-robots have been used, it is really not a new field although, if we talk about DNA nano-robots things change radically as we enter a discipline that, although it has quite a few followers, the truth is that we could classify it as relatively recent. The idea that exists about DNA nano-robots lies in the utility of getting the DNA itself DNA folds over itself as if it were a ball of paper until, when the moment comes, it can unfold and thus take action.
Basically what this new technique proposes is to be able to transport any type of drug to certain cells and, once it has been detected that the DNA has truly reached the cell on which we want to deliver the drug and not another, it releases it. To achieve this the team has been working on the aptamers, chemical antibodies that specifically target certain proteins that abound on the surfaces of tumor cells without actually attacking healthy cells.
So far the tests carried out on laboratory mice and pigs have been a success
Perhaps the most interesting part of this whole project can be found in the promise made by its researchers where, apparently and taking into account the tests carried out, it has been achieved that these nano-robots just attack tumorsIn other words, this technique does not cause damage to other parts of the body, one of the great problems of the current therapeutic approach.
Without a doubt this can be a great advance, especially when it comes to achieving eliminate problems that can be caused by currently used solutions such as the chemotherapy sessions that all cancer patients must face and that, because they are very aggressive, destroy many things on their way to kill tumor cells.
As the researchers who work on the development of this technique assure every day, we still cannot rejoice since it has only been possible to prove its worth in a laboratoryIt remains to begin to carry out tests with humans and verify its validity in order, after all this (a process that could take several years) to get it to reach society.