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One of the complications of treating serious diseases such as cancer, involving powerful drugs, such as chemotherapy, is that the drugs must flow throughout the body, resulting in more side effects. Medical staff have long sought to administer severe treatments, such as chemotherapy, directly to the affected cells in specific areas of the body. Researchers at Caltech's Division of Engineering and Applied Science believe that they have a new method that could allow targeted delivery of drugs into the body.
Researchers have developed microbots capable of delivering drugs to specific areas of the body. Although these microbots can deliver medications to specific parts of the body, they can be controlled and monitored from outside the body. Microbots are microscopic spheres of metallic magnesium coated with thin layers of gold and perylene. The latter is a polymer that resists digestion.
The coating layers leave a circular part of the sphere discovered to allow the magnesium to react with the fluids of the digestive tract and generate small bubbles. The flow of bubbles produced acts like a jet and propels the sphere forward until it reaches the tissues.
A drug layer is sandwiched between an individual microsphere and the parylene coating. For extra protection in the stomach, the spheres are also embedded in paraffin wax microcapsules. The spheres are able to deliver drugs in this configuration but are unable to reach the desired location in the body.
To guide the microbots towards the good part of the body, the team used the photoacoustic tomodensitometry or PACT. This technique uses infrared laser light pulses and was developed by the project researchers. When the microbots are near the tumor, the infrared laser beam heats them briefly, melting the wax capsule, exposing them to stomach acids and deploying their medications. Scientists say some of the microbots will stay where the drug is needed and others will not.
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