Biohybrid micro- and nanorobots are integrated tiny machines from biological components and artificial components. They can possess the advantages of onboard actuation, sensing, control, and implementation of multiple medical tasks such as targeted drug delivery, single-cell manipulation, and cell microsurgery.
Microrobotics is dedicated to the research and development of artificial machines with the maximum size on the micron scale for a wide range of real-world applications. This emerging research field has received ever-increasing attention, especially after molecular machines were selected as the topic of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016.
The purpose of the medical microrobotics is to develop and deploy large numbers of micro/nanomachines to carry out diverse medical tasks inside the complex body conditions. Nevertheless, existing challenges in materials design, mass production, biocompatibility, and control over locomotion and functionality need further efforts to overcome, thereby releasing the translational potential of medical microrobots for the clinic.
Review paper written by researchers from University of Chemistry and Technology Prague is to give an overview of biohybrid micro- and nanorobots for smart drug delivery applications. The present review work gives a summary of the recent advancements in rational designs of biohybrid micro- and nanorobots for targeted drug delivery applications The size of a biohybrid robot is related to the biological template used. For example, using a cell as the template, the robot size is close to the cell size.
“Despite the rapid development of biohybrid micro- and nanorobots with ever-increasing functionalities, most of the biohybrid micro- and nanorobots designed for drug delivery purposes are still in their infancy. There is still a long way to go before their commercialization and clinical applications can be achieved.,” says principal researcher professor Sofer.
Text is based on the research article: Jinhua Li, Lukas Dekanovsky, Bahareh Khezri, Bing Wu, Huaijuan Zhou, Zdenek Sofer, "Biohybrid Micro- and Nanorobots for Intelligent Drug Delivery", Cyborg and Bionic Systems, vol. 2022, Article ID 9824057, 13 pages, 2022. https://doi.org/10.34133/2022/9824057