Nanorobots for Targeted Drug Delivery

The division “Smart technologies for tumor therapy” at DKFZ Dresden led by Prof. Tian Qiu works on micro-/nano-robots, aiming at targeted cargo delivery. The team succeeded in developing the first nano-robots that can penetrate real tissue – the vitreous of the eye. The Nanorobots have a helical tail and are magnetically driven to actively propel through the vitreous of an eye to land on the retina for minimally-invasive drug delivery. The group has an exciting new project "VIBEBOT" funded by an ERC Starting grant. The goal is to build the first micro-robot that can actively propel and wirelessly sense in deep biological soft tissues, which will open up enormous potential for future medicine, such as targeted drug delivery into solid tumors and in vivo biopsy or sensing in a minimally-invasive manner.