An ever-increasing number of research groups are developing tiny robots, capable of performing targeted drug-delivery inside the body. One of the latest such devices incorporates a flapping whale-flukes-like tail, along with wings that fold up or down as needed.
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Contraceptives like the Pill are only effective if you remember to take them. In an effort to integrate into the lives of women more seamlessly, researchers at Georgia Tech have developed contraceptive patches that can be attached to jewelry.
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We've seen numerous nano-devices designed for tasks such as delivering medication within the body, and they move in a variety of ways. One of the latest is a tiny four-legged robot, that could actually walk to its target.
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Plenty of work has gone into developing an insulin pill as an alternative to injections, but that comes with its own challenges. Now, an MIT team has created a new design for a capsule that houses a microneedle made of insulin, which injects the hormone through the stomach lining.
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The human body is full of wildly different environments, so any robots exploring them need to be able to adapt on the fly. Now, researchers at EPFL and ETH Zurich have developed micro-robots that can automatically morph in response to their surroundings.
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Contraceptives are inconvenient – implanted devices are invasive, and you have to remember to take the pill every day. Now researchers at Georgia Tech are developing a painless, contraceptive microneedle patch that people can apply themselves in seconds, and only needs to be done once a month.
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Researchers at Rice University have developed a new way to activate treatments only in the right places, using an inert virus, magnetic nanoparticles and the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9.
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Bacteria continue to evolve resistance to our best drugs, but probiotics help keep bad bugs at bay. Now, MIT researchers have found a way to combine probiotics and antibiotic drugs into an uneasy alliance that seems to work better than either treatment alone.
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In the future, tiny robots of all kinds of shapes could be swimming and crawling through your body, delivering drugs or patching up wounds. The next robot to join those ranks is a caterpillar-inspired device, which gets around with ease on hundreds of tiny, pointy legs.
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The blood-brain barrier is an effective shield against infection, but it’s not so helpful when you’re trying to get drugs in there. Nasal sprays could bypass the barrier, and now researchers have developed a way to use ultrasound pulses to drive the drugs to where in the brain they’re needed.
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