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Chinese researchers have developed a method that allows micro-robots to penetrate the brain and fight tumors there.
Brain tumors are particularly sneaky. Drug treatment, which would be promising for many other tumors, is made more difficult by the blood-brain barrier, which usually prevents the passage of substances from the bloodstream into the central nervous system.
Researchers at the Harbin Polytechnic University have now demonstrated a method on mice that crosses the blood-brain barrier so that drugs can take effect at the tumor site. Their solution: Magnetic robots hidden in bacteria hidden in white blood cells.
Movement by magnets
The Chinese researchers filled the micro-robots with the anti-cancer drug paclitaxel. Embedded in a membrane of e.coli bacteria, they injected them into the tail of the test mouse.
Neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, recognize the e.coli bacteria and attack them. The microrobots are then swallowed. The blood cells with the robots inside can now be controlled by magnetic fields outside the body and thus moved from the tail to the mouse’s brain.
People have to wait a little longer
After breaking the blood-brain barrier, they can finally release the anti-cancer drug in the immediate vicinity of the tumor. This treatment increased the lifespan of the cancerous mice, the researchers write in their post in the journal “Science Robotics”.
This type of therapy in humans is of course much more complicated. In particular, tracking the movements of the tiny robots in the human body is almost impossible with current imaging methods such as MRI. Ultimately, however, the robots could also be helpful in the treatment of numerous other neurological diseases for which the options for action are currently limited due to the blood-brain barrier.
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