Nanobots as Therapeutic Devices

Abstract

Current medicine is limited both by its understanding and by its tools. In many ways, it is still more an art than a science. Today’s drug therapies can target some specific molecules, but only some, and only on the basis of type. Doctors today can’t affect molecules in one cell while leaving identical molecules in a neighboring cell untouched because medicine today cannot apply surgical control to the molecular level. To understand what nanotechnology can do for medicine, we need a picture of the body from a molecular perspective. There are opportunities to design nanosized, bioresponsive systems able to diagnose and then deliver drugs, and systems able to promote tissue regeneration and repair (in disease, trauma and aging), circumventing chemotherapy. The long term goal is the development of novel and revolutionary bimolecular machine components that can be assembled and form multi-degree-of freedom nano devices that will apply forces and manipulate objects in the nanoworld, transfer information from the nano to the macro world, and travel in the nano environment. These machines are expected to be highly efficient, controllable, economical in mass production, and fully operational with minimal supervision. The emerging field of medical nanorobotics is aimed at overcoming these shortcomings. Molecular manufacturing can construct a range of medical instruments and devices with greater abilities. Ongoing developments in molecular fabrication, computation, sensors and motors will enable the manufacturing of nanobots. These are theoretical nanoscale biomolecular machine systems within a size range of 0.5 to 3 microns with 1-100 nm parts. Work in this area is still largely theoretical, and no artificial non biological nanobots have yet been built. These ultra miniature robotic systems and nano-mechanical devices will be the biomolecular electro-mechanical hardware of future biomedical applications.