The Angels. Sending miniature robots inside the human skull to treat brain disorders has long been the stuff of science fiction, but it could soon become a reality, according to a California startup.
Bionaut Labs plans its first human clinical trials in two years for its small injectable robots, which can be carefully guided through the brain with the use of magnets.
“The idea for the microrobot came from long before I was born,” said Michael Shpigelmacher, the company’s co-founder and CEO.
“One of the most famous examples is a book by Isaac Asimov and a movie called fantastic trip, where a team of scientists enters a miniature ship into the brain to treat a clot,” he recalled.
Just as cell phones now have extremely powerful components that are smaller than a grain of rice, the technology behind microrobots “which used to be science fiction in the 1950s and 1960s is now science fact,” Shpigelmacher said.
“We want to take that old idea and turn it into reality,” the 53-year-old scientist told AFP during a tour of his company’s research and development center in Los Angeles.
Together with the prestigious Max Planck research institutes in Germany, Bionaut Labs decided to use magnetic energy to drive the robots, instead of optical or ultrasonic techniques, because it does not harm the human body.
Magnetic coils placed outside the patient’s skull are linked to a computer that can remotely and gently maneuver the microrobot toward the affected part of the brain, before removing it by the same route.
The entire device is easily transportable, unlike an MRI, and uses 10 to 100 times less electricity.
In a simulation observed by Afp, the robot – a metal cylinder a few millimeters long, shaped like a tiny bullet – slowly follows a preprogrammed path through a container filled with gel, which emulates the density of the human body.
Once it approaches a bag filled with blue liquid, it quickly propels itself like a rocket and punctures it with its pointed end, allowing the liquid to flow out.
The inventors hope to use the robot to puncture fluid-filled cysts inside the brain when clinical trials begin in two years.
If successful, the process could be used to treat Dandy-Walker syndrome, a rare brain malformation that affects children.
People with the congenital condition can experience golf ball-sized cysts, which swell and increase pressure on the brain, triggering a number of dangerous neurological conditions.
Bionaut Labs has already tested its robots on large animals like sheep and pigs, and “the data shows that the technology is safe for humans,” Shpigelmacher said.
If approved, the robots could offer key advantages over existing treatments for brain disorders.
“Today, most brain surgeries are limited to straight lines: if you don’t have one to the target, you’re stuck, you’re not going to get there,” the scientist clarified.
Micro-robotic technology “allows targets to be hit repeatedly in the safest possible trajectory,” he added.
Last year, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Bionaut Labs approvals paving the way for clinical trials to treat Dandy-Walker syndrome, as well as gliomas malignant, cancerous brain tumors that are often considered inoperable.
In the latter case, the microrobots will be used to inject anticancer drugs directly into tumors in a “surgical attack.”
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