This is fascinating and reminds me of one of my favorite medical stories.
The doctor that invented the "blood vessel path to the heart for a catheter" was German. He had the idea to try it out, grabbed a regular catheter, inserted it into a blood vessel in his own arm and pushed it in till he felt it in his heart.
He wanted evidence that he had actually done this so he walked to the X-Ray department (he worked at a hospital) and asked them to get him a chest x-ray.
Expensive and exotic vectors that target a particular tissue are potentially extremely valuable in the future. Gene therapy is now a thing, with new phase 2 trials showing incredible results coming out almost weekly (usually with a number needed to treat approaching 1, which is amazing).
The main issue is delivering the genetic patch to the tissue you want to fix. Some genes (eg. BRCA) are just really big and can't fit on some vectors, some tissues (eg. brain) are hard to reach, and you want to try to target tissues selectively, since we're not sure yet about side effects like insertional mutagenesis (although it doesn't seem to be a huge problem atm...probably depends on on the vector). A good vector makes a huge difference. Lipid nanoparticles for instance accumulate in the liver and can deliver all kinds of stuff, hence why there are so many studies targeting genetic errors of liver metabolism.
Exotic vectors for normal drugs are usually useless, as it would be too expensive for stuff needing daily or even monthly dosing (as long as it doesn't have a property of selectively targeting cancer). But for single dosage therapies, which gene therapies are, they are a potentially essential tool in the toolbox.
Linked this to illustrate the point. This is also a good example because the targeted genetic "patch" doesn't actually fix the underlying problem directly (C1 inhibitor deficiency), but goes about fixing the problem in a roundabout way just because that particular way involves the liver, instead of having to deliver the patch to all affected tissues (which in this disease is pretty much all of them). The treatment is thus just hugely effective instead of a complete cure. I personally have dealt with difficult cases of this particular disease in the past, and this treatment is a huge deal.
> Both robots are magnetic and guided wirelessly by an external electromagnetic coil system
That’s so cool. It reminds me of being a kid and playing with magnets beneath a sheet of cardboard, using them to invisibly move metal objects on the surface. Is that sort of the principle here?
I don't know about this specific principle but I know of at least one magnet-based surgery robot that is based on that principle, for heart catheterization. Seems like a trend in this area https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11548-025-03558-z
> The researchers successfully tested the robots on phantom heart models that closely mimic a human heart, and on real porcine heart tissue. The robots traveled smoothly and autonomously, even against simulated blood flow.
This is fascinating and reminds me of one of my favorite medical stories.
The doctor that invented the "blood vessel path to the heart for a catheter" was German. He had the idea to try it out, grabbed a regular catheter, inserted it into a blood vessel in his own arm and pushed it in till he felt it in his heart.
He wanted evidence that he had actually done this so he walked to the X-Ray department (he worked at a hospital) and asked them to get him a chest x-ray.
Wild how medicine has progressed.
(This story is from The Body by Bill Bryson)
Expensive and exotic vectors that target a particular tissue are potentially extremely valuable in the future. Gene therapy is now a thing, with new phase 2 trials showing incredible results coming out almost weekly (usually with a number needed to treat approaching 1, which is amazing).
The main issue is delivering the genetic patch to the tissue you want to fix. Some genes (eg. BRCA) are just really big and can't fit on some vectors, some tissues (eg. brain) are hard to reach, and you want to try to target tissues selectively, since we're not sure yet about side effects like insertional mutagenesis (although it doesn't seem to be a huge problem atm...probably depends on on the vector). A good vector makes a huge difference. Lipid nanoparticles for instance accumulate in the liver and can deliver all kinds of stuff, hence why there are so many studies targeting genetic errors of liver metabolism.
Exotic vectors for normal drugs are usually useless, as it would be too expensive for stuff needing daily or even monthly dosing (as long as it doesn't have a property of selectively targeting cancer). But for single dosage therapies, which gene therapies are, they are a potentially essential tool in the toolbox.
Edit: after writing this comment I just happened to check NEJM, and boom, yet another lipid nanoparticle based gene therapy in phase 3 which tremendous results: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2600931?query=fe...
Linked this to illustrate the point. This is also a good example because the targeted genetic "patch" doesn't actually fix the underlying problem directly (C1 inhibitor deficiency), but goes about fixing the problem in a roundabout way just because that particular way involves the liver, instead of having to deliver the patch to all affected tissues (which in this disease is pretty much all of them). The treatment is thus just hugely effective instead of a complete cure. I personally have dealt with difficult cases of this particular disease in the past, and this treatment is a huge deal.
> Both robots are magnetic and guided wirelessly by an external electromagnetic coil system
That’s so cool. It reminds me of being a kid and playing with magnets beneath a sheet of cardboard, using them to invisibly move metal objects on the surface. Is that sort of the principle here?
I don't know about this specific principle but I know of at least one magnet-based surgery robot that is based on that principle, for heart catheterization. Seems like a trend in this area https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11548-025-03558-z
Sounds like great weapon to assassinate someone.
Jokes apart, can anyone well versed actually tell of this is just a paper for publishing sake or is there any truth to this story ?
> The researchers successfully tested the robots on phantom heart models that closely mimic a human heart, and on real porcine heart tissue. The robots traveled smoothly and autonomously, even against simulated blood flow.
“In mice” - actually not even.
I think the researchers and I (and probably most other people) have a different definition of “autonomously”.
Not really, as your victim would also need to be in an MRI-like machine for fifteen minutes to an hour.
I do hope this is serious research as well. It’s hard to tell from the outside.
Even better, we can disguise it as a routine MRI scan
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It was only a matter of time... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRxfO7Fy0Yk
if they manage to drive small robots, they could probably also drive magnetotactic bacteria...!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotactic_bacteria
This is awesome, I didn't know about magnetosomes. Apparently, some cells in the human brain have them too. Function unknown. Wild.
Thank you. This is why I keep coming back here. Wild stuff.
eventually cows
electric signal based actuators is catching up after machine learning boom
I for one welcome our magnetic millirobot overlords into my beating heart.