TINY robots thinner than a human hair could help fight cancer tumours, a study has found.
Scientists have crafted special 3D-printed microbots able to directly take drugs to cancer cells.
They are only 30 microns — thousands of a millimetre — in diameter, and can easily turn from solid to liquid and back.
They can survive stomach acid and would pass out of the body in urine.
A trial in mice has already helped to shrink the size of bladder tumours.
A test on humans is now hoped for in the long term.
Researcher Wei Gao, of Caltech University in the US, said: “Rather than putting a drug into the body and letting it diffuse everywhere, now we can guide our microrobots directly to a tumour site and release the drug in a controlled and efficient way.
“We think this is a very promising platform for drug delivery and precision surgery.
“Looking to the future, we could evaluate using this robot as a platform to deliver different types of therapeutic payloads or agents for different conditions.
“In the long term, we hope to test this in humans.”
