A man has used thought alone to control nanorobots inside a living creature for the first time. The technology released a drug inside cockroaches in response to the man’s brain activity – a technique that may be useful for treating brain disorders such as schizophrenia and ADHD.
Getting drugs to where they need to be exactly when you want them is a challenge. Most drugs diffuse through the blood stream over time – and you’re stuck with the side effects until the drug wears off.
Now, a team at the Interdisciplinary Center, in Herzliya, and Bar Ilan University, in Ramat Gan, both in Israel, have developed a system that allows precise control over when a drug is active in the body.
The group has built nanorobots out of DNA, forming shell-like shapes that drugs can be tethered to. The bots also have a gate, which has a lock made from iron oxide nanoparticles. The lock opens when heated using electromagnetic energy, exposing the drug to the environment. Because the drug remains tethered to the DNA parcel, a body’s exposure to the drug can be controlled by closing and opening the gate.
The folks paranoid with nanobots will probably have a hard time accepting this, it could have two effects: 1) it could be one more reason not to trust pharmaceuticals 2) tablets and pills would no longer be a problem.
Damn I already feel nanobots crawling under my skin. This is soooo triggering!
Just kidding
Any advancement in neuroscience makes me regain some faith in humanity. We can do it folks!
Yeah, it would freak me out, but I could learn to live with it. Having a pacemaker and delusions about implanted alien monitoring tech is similar territory.
at a conference from the world futurist society, there was talk about medical scanning tools will becoming a lot more advanced in the near future, they will be able to detect the exact amount of drug that ‘Your body’ needs compared to just a shot in the dark hoping that a generalized amount will do the trick.
designer drug era catored to the individual. It should be quite helpful if/when it happens!
I laughed my azz off. I have to share that.