2023 Author: Bryan Walter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 22:24
Researchers at Harbin Polytechnic University and UC San Diego have developed a system for autonomous navigation of micromotor particles. To do this, they used a camera that automatically tracks obstacles in front of a microparticle and rotates it using a magnetic field. Scientists believe that their development could be useful in medical research and treatment, for example, to deliver a drug to a tumor, while avoiding normal cells. The research is published in the journal ACS Nano.
Since many drugs have side effects and act differently on different organs and cells, scientists are working to create systems for the targeted delivery of micro-doses of drugs to specific sites in the body. One of the types of such devices is micromotors. Often they are spheres with a certain amount of fuel, which reacts with the external environment or the micromotor housing and propels the sphere forward due to the release of gas. But this approach has a serious technical problem - the motion of such a particle must be controlled in some way.
System diagram: control computer, camera with microscope, and control magnetic coils
Scientists have solved this problem using a magnetic field, a camera and a computer planner. The process of advancing a micromotor through a medium with obstacles is arranged as follows. A camera connected to the microscope tracks the particle's movement in real time and feeds the data to a computer planner, which consists of three functional modules: a computer vision-based obstacle detector, a path planner, and a magnetic field controller that controls the particle's rotation. Thus, the computer can control the motion of the particle, even correcting its deviations from the given path.
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Researchers have demonstrated how the system works in several experiments. In one of them, the system was able to distinguish cancer cells from red blood cells and go specifically to them. They also managed to guide the micromotor through the labyrinth without colliding with its walls.
Recently, American scientists have developed micromotors for drug delivery, which neutralize gastric juice that degrades drugs. They normalize the pH in the stomach, after which the pH-sensitive polymer releases the active ingredient. In January, they were tested with fluorescent dyes, and more recently, mice were treated in the same way with antibiotics.
