A critically ill patient will be injected with robots smaller than the head of a pin to test a new cancer treatment.
Ido Bachelet, of Israel's Bar-Ilan Univerisity, told an incredulous audience recently that he and his team of nanotechnology scientists are not far from finalizing plans for the test. The speech was covered by SingularityHub.com.
His team has already performed the procedure on animals. Now Bachelet said his team is not far from injecting DNA nanobots into a cancer patient who has six months to live.
"No, no it's not science fiction; it's already happening," Bachelet told a somewhat incredulous audience at a London event late last year. Bachelet was with Harvard University's Wyss Institute and is a leading figure in the field of DNA nanotechnology.
Bachelet said the DNA nanobots are designed to interact with and destroy leukemia cells but leave healthy tissue untouched. Progress is being made rapidly in this area. Bachelet only started working with DNA nanobots three years ago.
The field of nanotechnology has been around since the early 1980s.
Bachelet said one day he hopes that the procedure will also be used not only in curing cancer but also in cancer prevention. The nanobots will one day be able to enable scientists to identify and then eliminate potential cancer cells in the body.
Since Ned Seeman, the pioneer of DNA nanotech, invented ways to shape strands into tiny particle shapes - in a campus bar 30 years ago - the science has advanced at a rapid pace.
The DNA-bending technology, in which all sorts of shapes can be constructed, serves a "robotic" purpose: The nanobot clamshells attached to DNA strands carry cancer drugs to the source of the tumor. The DNA strands will only attach to the cancerous protein and at that point the clamshell releases the drug.
Other uses for the DNA nanobots includes surgery on a minuscule scale, drug delivery and even mending spinal injuries.
