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Is there anything besides (massive) engineering challenges standing between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous tumors in the sa

Is there anything besides (massive) engineering challenges standing between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous tumors in the same way physicians use special maggots for wound debridement?

willcipriano 6y ago
Can we get batteries that are small enough and powerful enough to do it? This example is powered by lasers, it looks like they have to shoot a laser first at the front legs then again at the back legs in order to get it to walk. If we are able to shoot a laser at the robot walking on the tumor without damaging the surrounding tissue, why not just shoot it at the tumor?
- giantrobot 6y ago
  They could be powered by little rectennas, think RFID tag. Hit the bots with a radio frequency and it indict a charge and they power on and do their thing. Turn the radio off and they go inert. So they could be injected into a tumor and powered by an external radio source. In they're only powered by light a fiber optic filament could be injected in the activation site. So long as the light passes through enough tissue to power them you don't need to stick a halogen bulb up someone's butt.
  - polishdude20 6y ago
    Hard to do that when the antenna size is correlated with the frequency you can use. Tiny micro bots would need really high frequency signals
    - groby_b 6y ago
      Gamma rays would work well. We can keep the existing radiation treatment equipment. /sarcasm
      - giantrobot 6y ago
        Your cancer is gone...but don't get angry. Like ever.
    - giantrobot 6y ago
      A tuned antenna is correlated to frequency, a shitty antenna can be any size. In a microscopic robot needing likely µA of current an untuned antenna could be sufficient for power. But that's me speculating, I don't know how to power an injectable micro robot. If I did the link might have been about me! RF might be completely inappropriate for power.
- ridgeguy 6y ago
  Could alternate laser colors: green for front legs, red for back. Tailoring molecules for specific wavelength response is old tech.
- jb775 6y ago
  I'd think somehow turning heat energy into power would be ideal since human bodies naturally produce and regulate heat. Or maybe some sort of chemical breakdown where the energy could be relayed as a power source.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    That would make it worse not better as thr temperature differential is the power source. Something which binds to and cracks blood sugars would be closer in terms of exploiting bodily resources for the task but would still have many challenges at that scale.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Maybe let's bite the bullet and try chemical power? Natural nanobots (cells) work fine powering themselves off ATP, so why couldn't human-designed ones?
pazimzadeh 6y ago
The challenge is getting them to stop eating once the tumors are gone.
ramraj07 6y ago
It's still not a given that we have universal markers for cancers; cancers evolve in each patient in a variety of ways, making it hard to come up with a single protocol that works for everyone. Hence lots of work is needed on the biology part.
- XorNot 6y ago
  It's not clear we need universal markers though. We need that for targeting with things like drugs. Cancer in general though kills by physically impinging on or resource starving other body systems. There's a certain amount of "we know it when we see it" to that (and we're pretty good at seeing it). If you could direct a swarm of micro-robots towards the sites of metastasized cancer growths (which kill you because we can't go in and cut them all out without killing the patient from the surgery) then the prognosis would change substantially. The holy grail would in essence be, having a system which can get to all the places cancer can, at the same sorts of size scales cancer operates - rather then needing to be in the limited range of things we can surgically intervene on.
emerged 6y ago
I believe they are working on this and the code name is grey goo.
gnramires 6y ago
Calling those robots is a bit misleading, because they lack self-control. Control logic we know is large for very small robots. If you want a micron-scale robot you only get about 100 transistors for its "intelligence"[1]. There are certainly things it could do, but probably not autonomously navigate, map and recognize tumors. We just don't have the expertise for those kinds of thing, at least not yet. A plethora of sensors (that can detect cancerous cells) and this sort of technology would be needed. We'd essentially be trying to create artificial cells, a monumental task nature took billions of years in refinement (even if we can find shortcuts sometimes) -- too many very complex systems (energy, better sensors, better movement inside the body, "cognition", etc.). Maybe in 50 years of continued research? 100 years? I don't know. [1] The state of the art is about 100 transistors per square micron. This assumes you could drive and interface with them adequately. Cells accomplish all they do without any transistors at all, it's all protein-based sensors and DNA-encoded behavior, I believe.
- andrewl 6y ago
  Maybe the route toward what I'm envisioning (and hoping for) is genetically engineered or enhanced cells. Modify and existing system that already does a lot instead of trying to recreate a cell from the ground up.
  - jszymborski 6y ago
    We've been making artificial cells for quite some time, but they're purpose is more of a model than anything else. A way for us to study what happens when you take away everything and just start from the very basics. What you're talking about sounds more like artificial tissues and organs, which is an active area of study, although I don't immediately see how we might "engineer-out" cancer. There exists a world in which we develop tissues that age slower, but the more likely (not that it's happening anytime soon) scenario is very cheap organs that we can swap out for ours.
  - ianai 6y ago
    I sense robots not made out of similar materials may be easier for dealing with a cancer. It’s “out of band” - cell’s for instance seem to communicate through chemicals so the robot cells are likely to respond (or not) to the things in the biological system. As for more traditional robots with ~100 transistors, why do they need to be autonomous? Why not mesh network them and control them as drones?

willcipriano 6y ago

Can we get batteries that are small enough and powerful enough to do it? This example is powered by lasers, it looks like they have to shoot a laser first at the front legs then again at the back legs in order to get it to walk. If we are able to shoot a laser at the robot walking on the tumor without damaging the surrounding tissue, why not just shoot it at the tumor?

giantrobot 6y ago
They could be powered by little rectennas, think RFID tag. Hit the bots with a radio frequency and it indict a charge and they power on and do their thing. Turn the radio off and they go inert. So they could be injected into a tumor and powered by an external radio source. In they're only powered by light a fiber optic filament could be injected in the activation site. So long as the light passes through enough tissue to power them you don't need to stick a halogen bulb up someone's butt.
- polishdude20 6y ago
  Hard to do that when the antenna size is correlated with the frequency you can use. Tiny micro bots would need really high frequency signals
  - groby_b 6y ago
    Gamma rays would work well. We can keep the existing radiation treatment equipment. /sarcasm
    - giantrobot 6y ago
      Your cancer is gone...but don't get angry. Like ever.
  - giantrobot 6y ago
    A tuned antenna is correlated to frequency, a shitty antenna can be any size. In a microscopic robot needing likely µA of current an untuned antenna could be sufficient for power. But that's me speculating, I don't know how to power an injectable micro robot. If I did the link might have been about me! RF might be completely inappropriate for power.
ridgeguy 6y ago
Could alternate laser colors: green for front legs, red for back. Tailoring molecules for specific wavelength response is old tech.
jb775 6y ago
I'd think somehow turning heat energy into power would be ideal since human bodies naturally produce and regulate heat. Or maybe some sort of chemical breakdown where the energy could be relayed as a power source.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  That would make it worse not better as thr temperature differential is the power source. Something which binds to and cracks blood sugars would be closer in terms of exploiting bodily resources for the task but would still have many challenges at that scale.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Maybe let's bite the bullet and try chemical power? Natural nanobots (cells) work fine powering themselves off ATP, so why couldn't human-designed ones?

pazimzadeh 6y ago

The challenge is getting them to stop eating once the tumors are gone.

ramraj07 6y ago

It's still not a given that we have universal markers for cancers; cancers evolve in each patient in a variety of ways, making it hard to come up with a single protocol that works for everyone. Hence lots of work is needed on the biology part.

XorNot 6y ago
It's not clear we need universal markers though. We need that for targeting with things like drugs. Cancer in general though kills by physically impinging on or resource starving other body systems. There's a certain amount of "we know it when we see it" to that (and we're pretty good at seeing it). If you could direct a swarm of micro-robots towards the sites of metastasized cancer growths (which kill you because we can't go in and cut them all out without killing the patient from the surgery) then the prognosis would change substantially. The holy grail would in essence be, having a system which can get to all the places cancer can, at the same sorts of size scales cancer operates - rather then needing to be in the limited range of things we can surgically intervene on.

emerged 6y ago

I believe they are working on this and the code name is grey goo.

gnramires 6y ago

Calling those robots is a bit misleading, because they lack self-control. Control logic we know is large for very small robots. If you want a micron-scale robot you only get about 100 transistors for its "intelligence"[1]. There are certainly things it could do, but probably not autonomously navigate, map and recognize tumors. We just don't have the expertise for those kinds of thing, at least not yet. A plethora of sensors (that can detect cancerous cells) and this sort of technology would be needed. We'd essentially be trying to create artificial cells, a monumental task nature took billions of years in refinement (even if we can find shortcuts sometimes) -- too many very complex systems (energy, better sensors, better movement inside the body, "cognition", etc.). Maybe in 50 years of continued research? 100 years? I don't know. [1] The state of the art is about 100 transistors per square micron. This assumes you could drive and interface with them adequately. Cells accomplish all they do without any transistors at all, it's all protein-based sensors and DNA-encoded behavior, I believe.

andrewl 6y ago
Maybe the route toward what I'm envisioning (and hoping for) is genetically engineered or enhanced cells. Modify and existing system that already does a lot instead of trying to recreate a cell from the ground up.
- jszymborski 6y ago
  We've been making artificial cells for quite some time, but they're purpose is more of a model than anything else. A way for us to study what happens when you take away everything and just start from the very basics. What you're talking about sounds more like artificial tissues and organs, which is an active area of study, although I don't immediately see how we might "engineer-out" cancer. There exists a world in which we develop tissues that age slower, but the more likely (not that it's happening anytime soon) scenario is very cheap organs that we can swap out for ours.
- ianai 6y ago
  I sense robots not made out of similar materials may be easier for dealing with a cancer. It’s “out of band” - cell’s for instance seem to communicate through chemicals so the robot cells are likely to respond (or not) to the things in the biological system. As for more traditional robots with ~100 transistors, why do they need to be autonomous? Why not mesh network them and control them as drones?