Scientists Revolutionize Liver Cancer Treatment with Magnetic Microrobots

In an exciting development from Canada, Dr Gilles Soulez and his team have unveiled a revolutionary technique to change how liver tumours are treated. This cutting-edge method involves tiny, magnetically steerable microrobots within an MRI machine, offering a fresh perspective on medical treatments.

For years, the idea of employing minuscule robots to aid in healing within the human body has been a topic of fascination. These aren't just figments of science fiction; they are authentic, tiny, biocompatible machines made from magnetisable iron oxide nanoparticles. The beauty of these microrobots lies in their ability to be directed by external magnetic fields, allowing for targeted treatment delivery.

One of the main obstacles encountered in the past was the issue of gravity overpowering the magnetic forces intended to guide these robots. This was particularly problematic when reaching tumours above the injection site in the bloodstream. Despite the powerful magnetic fields generated by MRI machines, the gradients needed for navigation and imaging were insufficiently robust.

Dr. Soulez, who is associated with the CHUM Research Center and leads the Department of Radiology, radio-oncology, and Nuclear Medicine at the Université de Montréal, shared his team’s innovative solution to overcome this hurdle. "To solve this problem, we developed an algorithm that determines the position that the patient's body should be in for a clinical MRI to take advantage of gravity and combine it with the magnetic navigation force," he explained. This strategic approach helps direct the microrobots to the arterial branches feeding the tumour, improving the precision of treatment delivery.

The new technique signifies a shift in interventional radiology practices for treating liver cancer. Hepatocellular carcinoma, a common type of liver cancer, causes around 700,000 deaths annually worldwide. Traditionally, treatment involves transarterial chemoembolisation, a complex process where chemotherapy is directly delivered to the liver tumour's feeding artery, and the tumour's blood supply is blocked using microcatheters under X-ray guidance.

Dr. Soulez noted the benefits of magnetic resonance navigation, noting its compatibility with the implantable catheters used in chemotherapy. He emphasised the advantage of MRI over X-ray imaging in tumour visualisation, suggesting significant potential for this method in clinical applications.

The research team's collaboration with Sylvain Martel from Polytechnique Montreal and Urs O. Häfeli from the University of British Columbia has been pivotal in advancing this field. Ning Li, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr Soulez's laboratory and the study's first author, played a vital role in the research.

A key innovation was the development of an MRI-compatible microrobot injector, which assembles "particle trains"—clusters of these magnetisable microrobots that exhibit increased magnetic force, making them easier to navigate and detect in MRI scans.

To ensure the method's efficacy, the team conducted trials on 12 pigs, aiming to replicate human anatomical conditions as closely as possible. These trials confirmed the microrobots' capability to navigate to specific hepatic artery branches and reach their intended destinations, as the newly developed algorithm directed.

Additionally, the team utilised an anatomical atlas of human livers to simulate microrobot navigation in 19 patients previously treated with transarterial chemoembolisation, encompassing thirty tumours in different parts of the liver. The simulations indicated that the navigation algorithm was effective in over 95% of cases, allowing the microrobots to reach the targeted tumours successfully.

Despite these promising results, Dr. Soulez cautioned that the clinical adoption of this technology is still some way off. The following steps involve refining the real-time navigation of the microrobots using artificial intelligence, which would entail tracking the microrobots' location within the liver and identifying blockages in the hepatic artery branches that supply the tumour.

The team also develops models to simulate blood flow, patient positioning, and magnetic field direction. These models, created with fluid flow simulation software, will help determine how these factors affect the microrobots' journey to the tumour, thereby improving the treatment's accuracy and effectiveness.

This breakthrough by Dr. Soulez and his team represents a transformative approach to treating liver cancer, employing magnetically controlled microrobots to deliver therapy with unparalleled precision. By ingeniously merging gravitational and magnetic forces through a unique algorithm, this method promises increased treatment efficacy while minimising harm to healthy cells. However, the journey to clinical practice requires further advancements, particularly in the real-time navigation of the microrobots, which the team hopes to achieve with the help of artificial intelligence.

Anti-viral drugs can be final solution as WHO warns against lowering our guard to COVID-19

Suggestions that COVID-19 is on the wane have been strongly contradicted by the World Health Organization’s senior pandemics scientist, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove.

And her criticism of virus complacency has fuelled calls for research and development of anti-viral drugs to stop all coronaviruses at source, in addition to ongoing vaccines and testing for COVID-19 variants.

Dr Van Kerkhove, a highly regarded infectious disease epidemiologist and World Health Organization (WHO) Head of the Emerging Diseases and Zoonoses Unit, delivered her wake-up call in a BBC TV interview where she insisted that COVID-19 was still evolving and the world must evolve with it:

“It will not end with this latest wave (Omicron) and it will not be the last variant you will hear us (WHO) speaking about – unfortunately,” she told BBC interviewer Sophie Raworth.

Countries with high immunity and vaccination levels were starting to think the pandemic is over, she added, but despite 10 billion vaccine doses delivered globally, more than three billion people were yet to receive one dose, leaving the world highly susceptible to further COVID mutations - a global problem for which a global solution was needed.

She also challenged assumptions that the COVID Omicron variant was mild: “It is still putting people in hospital…and it will not be the last (variant). There is no guarantee that the next one will be less severe. We must keep the pressure up – we cannot give it a free ride.”

WNF Chairman Paul Stannard said: “We welcome Dr Van Kerkhove’s timely intervention. Too many people think we can sit back with COVID now, forgetting lessons learned the hard way.

“Such as there’s always another variant just around the corner, and testing and vaccines are not the complete answer.

“Even if Omicron seems milder than its predecessors – though this may be due to vaccinations and growing herd immunity – who can say that a more fatal COVID mutation will not follow, or an all-new virus is waiting to strike.

“Many other pathogens have entered humans in last 15 years including SARS, Ebola, Zika virus and Indian Flu variants, so permanent pandemic protection investment is vital to restoring confidence in our way of life and the global markets.

“An even older lesson is Spanish Flu (1918-20): the death toll was relatively contained initially, lulling people already fatigued by WW1 devastation into thinking the worst was over.

“But that virus then mutated into its most deadly strain, killing 50 million people when Earth’s population numbered less than two billion. All of which suggests we must maintain or redouble our efforts against COVID-19 and other potential threats.

“We have already benefitted from greater healthcare investment and research due to the pandemic: experts say the first six months of the emergency delivered sector progress equivalent to the previous 10 years.

“This helped unusually rapid deployment of new and better testing and vaccines that have driven down infection, hospitalization and deaths, but we hope that the WHO view will now foster a new and potentially more effective development against COVID and other threats – anti-viral drugs.

“Instead of attacking the virus like a vaccine, anti-viral drugs aim to stop it functioning in the human body. Merck and Pfizer say they have re-purposed existing drugs to do just that.

“But a better option is gathering momentum using nanomedicine, AI and advanced computational technology to develop all-new drugs more quickly and effectively, potentially delivering breakthroughs against many serious killers, including viruses, cancers and heart disease.

“WNF believes these can disrupt the traditional pharmaceutical industry as Tesla has done in the auto industry, or SpaceX and Blue Origin have done in space.”

California-based Verseon has developed an AI and computational drug development platform and has six drug candidates, including an anti-viral drug to potentially block all coronaviruses and some flu variants, potentially transforming pandemic protection.

This could be on the market within 18 months after securing a final $60 million investment, a small amount compared to the $1 billion pharma industry norm for a single new drug (source: Biospace), and weighed against 5.6 million COVID deaths globally and an estimated $3 trillion in economic output (source: Statista) lost since the start of the pandemic.

Verseon Head of Discovery Biology Anirban Datta said: “Vaccines and the current anti-viral drugs are retrospective solutions that don’t treat newly emergent strains. We need a different strategy to avoid always being one step behind viral mutations.

“So, we switched target from the virus to the human host. If we stop SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) entering our cells which, unlike viruses, don’t mutate then we have a long-term solution.

“Even better, the strategy should work against other coronaviruses and influenza strains that use the same mechanism as SARS-CoV-2 to infect cells – a key point, since it surely won’t be the last pandemic to affect humanity.”

How Nanotechnology can help to Improve Global Public Health

With the world changing due to COVID - 19, the protection of public health has never had more importance. Here’s how Nanotechnology could be used in the future to help improve and maintain human health and wellbeing.

Vaccines

Vaccines are the most definitive solution to the Covid-19 pandemic, and nanomaterials already play a vital role in vaccine design, development, delivery, and administration.

It is believed nanotechnology can be used in the future to create vaccines which will show a significant decrease in side effects along with improved effectiveness. Without nanotechnology, the speed and effectiveness of vaccines to meet the needed demand during a pandemic will not be able to be met in the future.

Cancer Treatment

One of the most promising methods for finding a cure for cancer is through Nanotechnology. A new nanotechnology design is already providing hope for personalized vaccinations for treating cancer, and nanomotor probes are also being developed to sense cancer environments in the body and target cancer cells.

This demonstrates how nanotechnology development will be critical for the development of cancer treatment across the globe in the near future.

Heart Treatment

As recently as 2020, scientists discovered a way to use nanoparticles to destroy plaques that cause heart attacks. It has also been discovered how you can use nanotechnology in tissue engineering and regeneration, as well as in heart repair.

With the use of nanotechnology and the potential it has, the treatment of heart disease, attacks, and failure will become more and more effective.

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