Health

Microrobots Made Of Algae Carry Chemo Directly To Lung Tumors

"Tumors that travel to the lungs, or lung metastases, pose a formidable challenge in the realm of cancer treatment. Conventional chemotherapy often falls short because it’s inefficient."

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Part algae, part red blood cell, these microrobots can travel to hard-to-reach tumors deep in the lungs. From Zhang et al., Sci. Adv. 10, eadn6157 (2024), CC BY-NC

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Tumors that travel to the lungs, or lung metastases, pose a formidable challenge in the realm of cancer treatment. Conventional chemotherapy often falls short because it’s inefficient. It doesn’t directly target the lungs and accumulate in a high enough concentration to kill tumors.

My colleagues and I from the Wang lab and Zhang Research Group at the University of California, San Diego have spent the past five years developing biohybrid microrobots, tiny objects made of both natural and synthetic materials, that can be used in medicine.

In our newly published research, we made a green microalgae-based biohybrid microrobot that can deliver chemotherapy directly to the lung and treat lung metastases.

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