Seaweed microbots could one day treat cancer, researcher says

STORY: These little green dots are microrobots.

They can navigate in a cell network and stimulate individual cells in a targeted manner.

Researchers at the Technical University of Munich – or TUM – say the microbot is the first of its kind... and has the potential to offer new treatment methods for patients battling cancer or other diseases.

Berna Ozkale Edelmann is the lead researcher at TUM.

“We are using these microrobots to build tissues under synthetic conditions. And the whole point of this is to then - in the future - repair damaged tissue or organs based on the patient. Sort of like manufacturing cars in a robotic factory.”

The tiny robots are made from seaweed and the team has found a way to produce millions of them in just minutes.

They are about half the width of a human hair – or about the same size as human cells.

They are soft like human cells, too, and can be controlled wirelessly.

Philipp Harder is a PhD student working on the project.

“We have gold nanoparticles inside the robots. And with a laser, which we can see here, we can heat certain areas of the robot. I'll let the video run for a moment. Then, when we point the laser in the direction of the robot, we can see that it starts to move. And so, we can then move it within the cell clusters and move it to other locations and then look at several cells in different ways.”

Ozkale Edelmann said the microbots aren't ready to help cancer patients just yet... but that the technology is supporting research already underway.

“The more we find out about these cells, the better we can actually design therapeutics.”