Nanorobots and the fight against cancer

A group of researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden announced a revolutionary breakthrough in the fight against cancer: nanorobots that detect and eliminate cancer cells in mice with near-surgical precision, aided by Artificial Intelligence.

The Precision of Nanotechnology in Medicine: A Route with Antecedents

By: Gabriel E. Levy B,

Ever since nanotechnology burst into the realm of medicine, researchers have visualized its potential to develop therapies that work with an accuracy that other techniques cannot.

At the beginning of this century, research on nanoparticles as vehicles to deliver drugs already hinted that they could “disguise” themselves as benign cells and achieve specific targets within the body.

However, they faced the challenge of activating these weapons without compromising healthy cells. Researchers such as MIT’s Robert Langer, a pioneer in the field of bioengineering, pointed to the potential of nanoparticles to revolutionize cancer treatments, stating that “these technologies can create precise effects where they are needed most.”

Over the years, medicine has advanced in modifying materials at the nanometer scale, allowing therapies such as chemotherapy to minimize their side effects through selective dosing.However, this new development from Karolinska Institutet takes that precision to an even more astonishing level: these DNA nanorobots are activated only upon contact with the acidic environment of a tumor, releasing a peptide that induces cell death only in cancer cells.

With this technology, it is possible not only to attack diseased cells, but also to preserve healthy tissue and, with it, improve the quality of life of the patient under treatment, something that would not have been possible to achieve without Artificial Intelligence.

The acidic microenvironment of tumors

Tumors typically create an acidic microenvironment that allows them to survive and expand, a phenomenon that has fascinated researchers for decades.

In 2009, Otto Warburg, a Nobel Prize-winning German physiologist, was already describing how cancer cells modify their environment to optimize their proliferation.

This discovery encouraged scientists to look for therapies that could take advantage of this hostile environment and target their attacks at cancer without compromising the rest of the body.

The Karolinska study starts from this basis, using a DNA structure that protects a cell death peptide until the structure detects the level of acidity characteristic of tumours.

Under normal pH conditions, such as those of healthy tissues, the peptide remains inactive, hidden, and unharmed. Only when the nanorobot detects the acidic microenvironment of cancer does the DNA structure break down, releasing the peptide and directly attacking malignant cells.

To put it in perspective, the operation of these nanorobots could be compared to a key and a padlock.

The acid “lock” surrounding the cancer cells activates the “key” inside the nanorobot, releasing the lethal peptide in a targeted manner. This ability to “discriminate cell”, attacking only when an acidic microenvironment is detected, makes this technology one of the most promising for future cancer treatments.

The promise and challenges:

Initial studies by the Karolinska Institutet in mice have yielded impressive results. In experiments with mice carrying breast cancer tumors, the nanorobots were able to reduce tumor growth by 70% compared to a placebo. This figure represents a significant advance over traditional treatments and strengthens the nanorobots’ ability to act without affecting surrounding healthy tissue. However, the road to a human implementation remains long and full of challenges.

The researchers insist that further studies, this time in more complex and diverse cancer models, and eventually in human clinical trials, are crucial to ensure long-term safety and effectiveness.

One of the great challenges is the ability of these nanorobots to adapt to different types of cancer, since not all tumours have the same level of acidity or the same internal biology.

Researchers in the field, such as Mauro Ferrari, an expert in nanotechnology applied to medicine, emphasize that “advances in nanomedicine need a combination of biological specificity and adaptability that is still difficult to achieve.”

However, Ferrari also highlights that the use of these DNA structures opens up the possibility of reprogramming and customizing them for different types of cancer in the future.

Successful cases and promising clinical trials

The results in mice provide a hopeful insight, but it is still an experimental approach.

There are previous cases in which nanorobot-based treatments showed efficacy in animals, although they failed in human tests due to the complexity of the human immune system and variations in the tumor microenvironment. However, there have been some successes in early stages of clinical trials with nanoparticles adapted to specific treatments, such as glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer that has been a prime target for nanomedicine in recent years. In this context, the researchers have achieved encouraging results by applying a combination of nanoparticles that cross the blood-brain barrier to attack malignant cells.

Other studies have succeeded in introducing chemotherapy drugs into nanoparticles that target specific tumors, which allowed the dosage to be reduced and thus the side effects.

The next step, according to the scientists, is to test these nanorobots in more complex cancer models, such as pancreatic cancer or melanoma, which present more aggressive tumor environments and are resistant to conventional treatments.

In conclusion, this breakthrough in nanorobots programmed to attack cancer opens a window of hope in the fight against one of the most devastating diseases of our time.

With their ability to act in the acidic environment of tumors, nanorobots not only offer precision, but also the promise of less invasive treatment with fewer side effects. Although the challenges are great, this research represents a firm step towards an era of more selective and effective cancer treatments.