When Robots Invade Our Bodies:

How Nanotechnology Will Conquer Disease and Extend Our Lives

It’s crowded this morning at the Southern New Jersey NanoClinic. It’s the last week of the summer of 2035 and I notice four or five people who are usually here when I come in for my shots.

I see Jennie sitting to my left. At 85, she has heart disease and comes in every week for a shot of nanobots containing stem cells. Her doctor told her that they seek out damaged heart tissue and regrow it. She told me that it’s working, and this is her last treatment.

Fred is a diabetic nearing 75 years old. His nanobots release insulin when they detect that his glucose levels are rising. “No more insulin injections for me,” he said with a grin.

And then there’s Charlie, sitting by himself, reading the Wall Street Journal. Several weeks ago, he told me that he was participating in a special nanobot study on repairing aging cells with an antiaging nanobot named mesoporous.

This agent can selectively release drugs in aged human cells that cause tissue or cellular degenerations such as cancer, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, among others. He added that the nanodevice his doctors are using can also be applied to cosmetic therapies for improving skin and hair, as an anti-wrinkle or anti-aging treatment, or as a UV radiation shield.

And me? I’m here today for my prostate cancer treatment. I remember the old days, back in 2020, when I had to undergo radiation which destroyed both cancerous and healthy cells and wiped me out for a month. It also didn’t kill all the cancer cells, so my disease came back.

This treatment is much easier and more potent. Every four weeks, the doctors inject me with a nanobots named “nbtxr3.” These attach themselves to my prostate cancer cells, which they recognize. Then a beam of x-rays activates them, and the cancer cells wave the white flag and die.

Technology the Size of an Atom

Nanotechnology is science of manipulating individual atoms and molecules at the nanoscale.

Nanobots are microscopic robots created from elements called nanoparticles.

Nanoparticles are typically as small as a few billionths of a meter long.

How small is that?

A meter divided by 10 is the size of a fingertip. Divide the meter by 10 once more, and you get a length about the size of the eye of a needle. Another division by 10 results in the thickness of a human hair, the smallest thing you can see by eye. Yet another division by 10 produces a length of size of a blood cell, 10 micrometers or .00001 m. Divide by 10 again and you get something the size of a bacterium. The next division gives you a length the size of a virus, about 100nm. Finally, divide the size of a virus by 100 and you get half of the thickness of a strand of DNA: 1 nm. This is the length of 5 atoms side by side. This is the bodily world where nanobots perform, either singly or as tiny robots working together.

How Nanobots are Being Used to Combat Disease

Nanobots are now being used in many medical applications, where the goal is to target a disease or degenerative condition at the cellular level.

Nanobots can deliver a drug to a precise location in the body. Targeting the delivery site makes a drug more effective and diminishes side effects. Nanobots with imbedded sensors can monitor blood sugar levels. They emit an electrical signal that relays the sugar level in the blood that controls the timing and amount of drug delivery.

Using nanobots, a drug can be targeted to a precise location which would make the drug much more effective and reduce the chances of possible side effects. In the future, nanorobots could actually be programmed to repair specific diseased cells, functioning in a way similar to the antibodies in our natural healing processes.

Gold nanobots combined with infrared light can kill bacteria. The goal of a group of University of Houston researchers is to find a simple way to sterilize medical instruments by harnessing this technique.

Scientists at the University of Wisconsin have developed an active bandage that uses nanobots to generate electricity and heal wounds faster. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University have created synthetic blood platelets by using polymer nanoparticles. When injected into wounds the nanoparticles quickly reduce the loss of blood. Nanobots are also showing promise as synthetic antibodies, which can be designed to target specific disease cells.

Are Nanobots Risk Free?

According to a 2020 report by the Australian Victorian Trades Hall Council’s (VTHC) Occupational Health and Safety Unit:

The miniature size of nanomaterials and the way their surfaces are modified to increase the ease with which they can interact with biological systems — the very characteristics that make them attractive for applications in medicine and industry — makes nanomaterials potentially damaging for humans and the environment.

The report identifies several potential dangers, the most troubling being that humans have no natural immunity to synthetic materials. Because they can penetrate deep into body tissues, nanoparticles may damage the lungs. A German study discovered that when nanoparticles were deposited in the nasal region of rodents, they passed through the blood/brain barrier and travelled up the olfactory nerves straight into the brain.

The Future of Nanobots

In 1966, the film Fantastic Voyage posited a narrative wherein t a submarine and crew are shrunk to microscopic size and projected into the body of an injured scientist to repair damage to his brain. The film was not only a hit but presaged the era of nanotechnology, providing the audience with a glimpse of a possible future that has now become reality, albeit without the shrunken humans.

Dr. Shogo Hamada, at Cornell’s Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, predicts some of nanotechnology’s possibilities:

“Fundamentally, we may be able to change how we create and use the materials with lifelike characteristics. Typically materials and objects we create in general are basically static… one day, we may be able to ‘grow’ objects like houses and maintain their forms and functions autonomously,” “Ultimately, our material may allow the construction of self-reproducing machines… artificial metabolism is an important step toward the creation of ‘artificial’ biological systems with dynamic, lifelike capabilities. It could open a new frontier in robotics.”

Is Dr. Hamada correct? Will nanobots develop to the point where they are able to extend our lives indefinitely by freeing us from disease and ageing? Though the answer remains uncertain, the possibilities are exciting.