Nanorobots with hidden weapons for precision cancer therapy

Karolinska InstitutetJul 1 2024 The robot's weapon is hidden in a nanostructure and is exposed only in the tumor microenvironment, sparing healthy cells. The study is published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

"This hexagonal nanopattern of peptides becomes a lethal weapon," explains Professor Björn Högberg at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet, who led the study. "If you were to administer it as a drug, it would indiscriminately start killing cells in the body, which would not be good. To get around this problem, we have hidden the weapon inside a nanostructure built from DNA.

We have managed to hide the weapon in such a way that it can only be exposed in the environment found in and around a solid tumor. This means that we have created a type of nanorobot that can specifically target and kill cancer cells." The key is the low pH, or acidic microenvironment that usually surrounds cancer cells, which activates the nanorobot's weapon.

Related Stories"We now need to investigate whether this works in more advanced cancer models that more closely resemble the real human disease," says the study's first author Yang Wang, a researcher at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet. "We also need to find out what side effects the method has before it can be tested on humans."

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