Researchers have created nanoscale robots which could be used to manage bleeds in the brain caused by aneurysms. The development could enable precise, relatively low-risk treatment of brain aneurysms, which cause around 500,000 deaths globally each year. The medical condition—a blood-filled bulge on a brain artery that can rupture and cause fatal bleeds—can also lead to stroke and disability.
The study points to a future where tiny robots could be remotely controlled to carry out complex tasks inside the human body—such as targeted drug delivery and organ repair—in a minimally invasive way, researchers say.
Swarming bots
The team, involving researchers from the University of Edinburgh, engineered magnetic nanorobots—about a twentieth the size of a human red blood cell—comprising blood-clotting drugs encased in a protective coating, designed to melt at precise temperatures. The work is published in the journal Small.
In lab tests, several hundred billion such bots were injected into an artery and then remotely guided as a swarm, using magnets and medical imaging, to the site of an aneurysm.
Magnetic sources outside the body then cause the robots to cluster together inside the aneurysm and be heated to their melting point, releasing a naturally occurring blood-clotting protein, which blocks the aneurysm to prevent or stem bleeding into the brain.
Lab trials
The international team, co-led by clinicians from Shanghai Sixth People’s Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine in China, successfully tested their devices in model aneurysms in the lab and in a small number of rabbits.
The team says that nanorobots show potential for transporting and releasing drug molecules to precise locations in the body without risk of leaking into the bloodstream—a key test of the technology’s safety and efficacy.
The study could pave the way for further developments towards trials in people.
Promising potential
Their advancement could improve on current treatments for brain aneurysms. Typically, doctors thread a tiny microcatheter tube along blood vessels before using it to insert metal coils to stem the aneurysm blood flow, or a mesh tube called a stent, to divert the bloodstream in the artery.
Researchers say their new technique could decrease the risk that the body will reject implanted materials, and curb reliance on anti-blood-clotting drugs, which can cause bleeding and stomach problems.
The method also avoids the need for doctors to manually shape a microcatheter to navigate a complex network of small blood vessels in the brain to reach the aneurysm—a painstaking task which may take hours during surgery, researchers say.
Larger brain aneurysms—which can be difficult to stem quickly and safely using metal coils or stents—could potentially be treated using the new technique too.
The study was led by a team from the UK and China who have also developed nanorobots to remove blood clots, which show potential in treating stroke.
“Nanorobots are set to open new frontiers in medicine—potentially allowing us to carry out surgical repairs with fewer risks than conventional treatments and target drugs with pinpoint accuracy in hard-to-reach parts of the body. Our study is an important step towards bringing these technologies closer to treating critical medical conditions in a clinical setting,” Dr. Qi Zhou.
More information: Jienan Wang et al, Nanoarchitectonic Engineering of Thermal‐Responsive Magnetic Nanorobot Collectives for Intracranial Aneurysm Therapy, Small (2024). DOI: 10.1002/smll.202400408
Journal information: Small
Provided by University of Edinburgh
News
Your Bones May Hold a Hidden Clue to Blood Cancer Survival
For people with blood cancers called myelodysplastic syndromes, osteoporosis may hold an overlooked clue to survival, a three-year observational study suggests. In blood cancers that develop in the bone marrow, an important clue to [...]
Researchers Discover What Reading for Pleasure May Be Doing to Your Brain
Reading for pleasure may offer surprising benefits for the brain, with research linking the habit to better mental health, stronger cognitive abilities, and a lower risk of dementia. Reading for pleasure may do far [...]
Scientists Discover a Hidden Trigger That Keeps Inflammation Alive
Inflammation persists after proteins detach from immune receptors, revealing a potential target for autoimmune treatments. Since a Nobel Prize-winning discovery in the 1990s identified molecules called Toll-like Receptors as the guardians of the human [...]
A Virus Gives Itself Away the Moment It Attacks
Researchers have found the trigger behind a powerful bacterial defense against viruses. Viruses that prey on bacteria could become an increasingly important tool for treating bacterial infections, particularly as antibiotic resistance makes some infections [...]
Scientists Discover Aspirin May Slash Dementia Risk by 70% – but Only for Certain People
Aspirin was linked to a sharply lower dementia risk in some older adults, and their genes may hold the clue. A Monash University analysis found that older adults with a particular genetic profile had [...]
Inflammation May Awaken Dormant Cancer Cells Years After Treatment
The body’s response to inflammation may disturb cancer cells that have been lying silent for years, giving them an opportunity to grow again. Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have found that gut inflammation [...]
Where do nanoparticles go once they enter the body?
New international best practice guidance, co-written at ANSTO, sets out how to measure where nanoparticles like titanium dioxide end up in the body and how long they remain. The guidance has been shared by [...]
Long-Acting HIV Shots Could Solve a Major Treatment Challenge for Young People
A major African trial suggests that changing how HIV treatment is delivered could significantly improve viral suppression in adolescents. Young people with HIV were more likely to keep the virus suppressed when they received [...]
WHO Factsheets – The top 10 causes of death
In 2023, the 10 leading causes of death accounted for 33 million deaths, or 54% of the total 61 million deaths worldwide. The top global causes of death, in order of total number of lives lost, [...]
Aging Cells May Be Hiding From the Immune System – Scientists Think They Know How
Your immune system is supposed to clear out damaged cells. Researchers may have found how some of them hide and linger as the body ages. Researchers led by Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University have identified [...]
Your Voice May Reveal How Fast Your Brain Is Aging
Researchers have developed a machine-learning “speech clock” that estimates age from subtle patterns in how people speak and what they say. It is possible that people’s voices may contain certain signals of aging that [...]
Optogenetics Pioneers Win 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Peter Hegemann, Georg Nagel, and Karl Deisseroth for the development of optogenetics, a revolutionary technology that uses light to control individual neurons [...]
Molecular Manufacturing: The Future of Nanomedicine – From NanoappsMedical Inc.
This book explores the revolutionary potential of atomically precise manufacturing technologies to transform global healthcare, as well as practically every other sector across society. This forward-thinking volume examines how envisaged Factory@Home systems might enable the cost-effective [...]
What is ‘American Covid’ and how bad is it?
Cases of so-called ‘American Covid’ are on the rise in the UK. The strain is officially called XFG, or ‘Stratus’, and is the most common variant in North America, hence the name. It might soon [...]
Researcher at Russian plague laboratory dies of ‘unknown’ infection
Russian authorities have imposed "anti-epidemic measures" after a laboratory worker at an institute in Siberia dedicated to studying the plague and other infectious diseases died of a mysterious illness. The researcher, a 28-year-old female [...]
GHCE Concept
From the preface of the book Global Health Care Equivalency in the Age of Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine and Artificial Intelligence, Edited by Frank Boehm: Since the publication of my first book (Nanomedical Device and Systems [...]
