Nanorobotics; The Future of Medicine and Surgery

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Robotic have made significant impact on human activities in our world today by using machines to execute tasks automatically with speed and precision. Tasks from helping to solve household needs to manufacturing, robotic nurses, security and so on. With robotics, it can be said that human abilities to focus on other thing have increased while leaving a few to robots to handle. Recently, robotics and artificial intelligence brought about an upgrade in the world of robotics which made robots perform operations as well as think and act like humans and it is certain that in the future, robots and Artificial intelligence will be more beneficial to humans. For this post, I am not talking about the large robots rather, I will be discussing the smaller robots. Robots of about 0.1-10 micrometer called Nanorobots and I will be looking at how they are changing the medical world.

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Nanorobots are devices or robots of very small diameter within the range of 0.1 -10 micrometer used to perform functions that can be seen only microscopically. Researcher have long envisioned and worked on having tiny robots perform medically related actions like roaming the body of humans, delivering drugs with unprecedented precision, preventing and killing antigens as well as cancerous cells.

Progress is being made to see micro/nano robots with board sensors, motors, manipulators, power supplies and molecular computers perform activities inside the bloodstream and organs or humans without operating the humans. In February 2018, scientist from the China national center for nanoscience and technology (NCNT) as well as Arizona state university developed robots of about 25 million nanometer in an inch, made from sheets of DNA rolled into tubes containing a blood clotting drug. The nanorobots were able to destroy cancer cells and tumors. The robots were injected into a mice bloodstream and were able to shrink cancerous growths by blocking their blood supply. The scientist placed a DNA molecule that was able to bind with proteins found only in cancerous cells and release drugs.

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Application of Nanorobots in Medicine

In Surgeries

In the world of neurosurgery, spinal cord injury and nerve damage have been a major concern. Surgical nanorobots when introduced into the body act as surgeons while the human surgeon control them from the outside. The nanorobots search for pathogens, then diagnosis and correction are done while conversing with the nanorobots by an on-board computer.

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Treating Cancerous cells/Oncology

With nanorobots, there have been an improvement in the quality of treatment for cancer patients. The robots were injected into a mice bloodstream and were able to shrink cancerous growths by blocking their blood supply and releasing of drugs. Unlike chemotherapy with toxic side effect as well as killing of other useful cells, nanorobots are constructed in a way that they can differentiate different cell receptors and identify cancerous cells.

Gene Therapy

One very vital application of nanorobots is in treating genetic diseases by relating the molecular structure of the DNA and the proteins. In cases where there are irregularities in the DNA structures and protein sequences, the nanorobots replaces the chromosomes.

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IN CONCLUSION

Other aspect of nanorobotic technology in medicine include in dentistry, application of medications, transporting and releasing of cells and many more. It is true that medical nanorobots holds lots of promises from eradicating diseases to treatment at low costs and reduced risk.



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18 comments
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Nanotechnology is an amazing field and a combination with medicine means limitless treatments for patients.

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Patients can get adequate treatment for illness with the help of nanotechnology.

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Dear @mojubare.

The nanobots, with those characteristics that most of us imagine, do not currently exist.
That is, those small electronic systems with AI that can be programmed to perform specific tasks, have not yet been developed and I think it will take many years for this dream to come true.

Nanotechnology This term is applied to the material or materials used whose dimensions are between 0.1 - 100 nanometers.

What does exist today is the use of nanotechnology in various areas such as medicine and cosmetics.
In medicine, molecular designs (proteins, DNA) have been developed that in fact generate medical benefits and are currently used. But they are not "Robots." This is more than everything, an advertising term.

Great article.

Your friend, Juan.

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I appreciate your contribution and correction, it means so much to me as I will not claim to be an expert in this field, we learn everyday.

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I am not an expert either.
It was only the product of a little research.

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Alright, it is greatly appreciated.

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Wow, so many amazing help offered by technological improvement.
I have to admit that, whenever I read posts like this in this community, I feel really bad about my inability to write something as beautiful as this. Great share dear

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@oluwatobiloba, you are doing well in the field you have chosen, I am not an expert either, we are only striving for excellence so just stick to what you are good at babe.

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It sounds like something out of a science fiction story. Although almost all inventions originate from science fiction stories. This invention is very peculiar. It could be a double-edged sword.

However, how do they prevent the antibodies from stopping the nano-machines?

I guess in the future we can buy pills or capsules filled with nanomachines to solve any disease:

We'll go to a drugstore and go to the solving diseases aisle: Cancer, flu, tumors, heart disease, high blood pressure, damage of any kind... and select the bottle with the pills we need and that's it.

We'll see advertisements like:

  • You had unprotected sex, take a couple of these nanopills and problem solved.

  • Do you want to have blue eyes? Do you want to have a carrot color on your skin? Do you want to have hair? Just take one of the nanopills and problem solved.

I wonder if this will affect the world's overpopulation rate

Thanks for sharing! :D

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Lol, the last part cracked me up though, I appreciate your comment. I am also concerned about it replacing human effort.

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Hehe, I'm glad you found it funny. I like to make people happy ;)

About the human replacement. There's something called the caveman effect, or something like it, and it refers to the rejection of technology.

I can only imagine the cavemen being frightened, shouting incomprehensible sounds and hitting with a stick the first time they saw fire or some sign of technology emerging: the slingshot, bowls, and spears.

Well, it seems that we are not that far from them, since internally we have that fear embedded in our DNA.

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The future is here is what we can say but one difficulty this nanorobots could be having is corrosion as they stay longer in the body, although they might be very small but they still are external bodies only if they have a way of getting out of the human human body

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Things are getting better daily, once this is noticed then there will be a solution to curb it immediately, thanks for the contribution.

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Nanobots have fascinated me from the first time I heard of them. Hard to imagine something so small having so many applications. None of the articles I ever had make them sound like any of the images he posted here 🙂

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