A Brief Review on Nanorobotics Applications in Medicine and Future Prospects

Abstract

Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the microscopic scale of a nanometer. These devices are ranging in size from 0.1-10 micrometers and constructed of nanoscale. Due to their small size and wide functional properties, nanorobots have created exceptional prospects in medical, biomedical and pharmaceutical applications. The names nanobots, nanoids, nanites or nanomites have also been used to describe these hypothetical devices. Nanorobots are capable of performing task like actuating, sensing, signalling, information processing and intelligence at the nanoscale. Nanotechnology promises futuristic applications such as microscopic robots that assemble other machines or travel inside the body to deliver drugs or do microsurgery. Nanorobots could carry and deliver large amounts of anti-cancer drugs into cancerous cells without harming healthy cells, reducing the side effects related to current therapies like damage of the conventional chemotherapy. They are well used to cure HIV, cancer and other harmful diseases; they can restore lost tissue at the cellular level, useful for monitoring, diagnosing and fighting sickness. A recent discovery in the field of drug delivery is target therapy, which improves the diagnostic tests and medical devices.