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Nano Subs in your Blood

Posted by michael on from the damn-the-torpedoes dept.

Noryungi writes "The BBC is reporting about bacteria-propelled nano-subs that can be used to deliver drugs in the bloodstream. Interesting part is that (a) salmonella bacteria are ideal for this and (b) that prototypes could be just one year away. Nano-VaporWare?" Somehow, I think the one-year estimate seems a bit optimistic.

2 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. They don't retreive it... by Dan+Hayes · · Score: 4

    Second, how would they retrieve the sub once it finished it's work. I'd hate to think of these things degrading inside my body, and releasing all their chemicals and left-over bio-products.

    They don't retreive it - the flagella only have the energy to keep going for an hour or so, and then they die. I'd assume that they would have thought of this problem - plenty of stuff already gets filtered out of your bloodstream anyway, so I doubt it would be that difficult to design a non-toxic solution.

    Also, what if one of the nano-subs gets transferred to another person through an open wound.

    Again, because they have such a short lifespan this isn't a problem. They're not going to be able to do any damage - after all the whole reason for this is precision targetting of drugs rather than saturation, so there won't be that many of the things in your body at any one time.

  2. Nature's engineering by Dan+Hayes · · Score: 4

    This is the sort of thing I think we'll be hearing a lot more of in coming years - a marraige between our increasing ability to design and manufacture things at a sub-microscopic level and Nature's vast wealth of tried and tested designs for all kinds of systems.

    It makes far more sense for scientists to utilise a design that is commonly found in Nature than it is to design their own. After all, evolutionary pressures mean that the propeller design of bacterium like salmonella has undergone a far more rigorous selection procedure than even the most quality-conscious engineering team will ever adhere to. Why waste so much effort in designing a likely-inferior system?

    It makes a lot of sense to adapt existing systems to our purposes rather than designing everything from scratch. You can bet that prototypes would be a lot further away than a year without this synthesis of man and Nature. Very interesting indeed.