Autonomous 'walkers' navigate cell surfaces
23 Oct 2014
A new system that mimics the body’s ability to guide cells, enzymes and molecules to specific structures within the body could deliver drugs and locate tumour cells, research suggests.
A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a new target-finding mechanism that allows microscopic devices to independently navigate to areas of a cell surface by detecting an increase in surface friction in places where more cell receptors are concentrated.
A full account of the study has been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
“Our system is very simple
MIT professor Alfredo Alexander-Katz
MIT professor, and lead researcher, Alfredo Alexander-Katz said the mechanism was eventually developed through an initial attempt to find out if it was possible to create a synthetic, active system that could sense gradients in biological receptors.
“Our system is very simple,” said Alexander-Katz, who claims there are similarities between the MIT mechanism and the way in which bacteria locate the nutrients they need.
The MIT system uses a pair of linked particles with magnetic properties.
Researchers claim that in the presence of a magnetic field, the paired particles begin to tumble across a surface, with first one particle and then the other making contact – in effect, ’walking’ across the surface.
Though researchers have only tested the device on a model cell surface, the goal is to demonstrate the ability of the microscopic walkers to find their way toward concentrations of receptors in actual living tissue.
If successfully marketed, the mechanism could be used to locating tumour cells within the body by identifying their surface texture, Alexander-Katz said.
“It’s a very versatile system that can be functionalised by attaching other kinds of receptors or binding agents to affect or monitor the target area in different ways,” Alexander-Katz said.
