This is fascinating and reminds me of one of my favorite medical stories.
The doctor that invented the "blood vessel path to the heart for a catheter" was German. He had the idea to try it out, grabbed a regular catheter, inserted it into a blood vessel in his own arm and pushed it in till he felt it in his heart.
He wanted evidence that he had actually done this so he walked to the X-Ray department (he worked at a hospital) and asked them to get him a chest x-ray.
Wild how medicine has progressed.
(This story is from The Body by Bill Bryson)
stalfie 14 hours ago [-]
Expensive and exotic vectors that target a particular tissue are potentially extremely valuable in the future. Gene therapy is now a thing, with new phase 2 trials showing incredible results coming out almost weekly (usually with a number needed to treat approaching 1, which is amazing).
The main issue is delivering the genetic patch to the tissue you want to fix. Some genes (eg. BRCA) are just really big and can't fit on some vectors, some tissues (eg. brain) are hard to reach, and you want to try to target tissues selectively, since we're not sure yet about side effects like insertional mutagenesis (although it doesn't seem to be a huge problem atm...probably depends on on the vector). A good vector makes a huge difference. Lipid nanoparticles for instance accumulate in the liver and can deliver all kinds of stuff, hence why there are so many studies targeting genetic errors of liver metabolism.
Exotic vectors for normal drugs are usually useless, as it would be too expensive for stuff needing daily or even monthly dosing (as long as it doesn't have a property of selectively targeting cancer). But for single dosage therapies, which gene therapies are, they are a potentially essential tool in the toolbox.
Linked this to illustrate the point. This is also a good example because the targeted genetic "patch" doesn't actually fix the underlying problem directly (C1 inhibitor deficiency), but goes about fixing the problem in a roundabout way just because that particular way involves the liver, instead of having to deliver the patch to all affected tissues (which in this disease is pretty much all of them). The treatment is thus just hugely effective instead of a complete cure. I personally have dealt with difficult cases of this particular disease in the past, and this treatment is a huge deal.
adriand 20 hours ago [-]
> Both robots are magnetic and guided wirelessly by an external electromagnetic coil system
That’s so cool. It reminds me of being a kid and playing with magnets beneath a sheet of cardboard, using them to invisibly move metal objects on the surface. Is that sort of the principle here?
Konnstann 19 hours ago [-]
I don't know about this specific principle but I know of at least one magnet-based surgery robot that is based on that principle, for heart catheterization. Seems like a trend in this area https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11548-025-03558-z
wetwater 22 hours ago [-]
Sounds like great weapon to assassinate someone.
Jokes apart, can anyone well versed actually tell of this is just a paper for publishing sake or is there any truth to this story ?
refactor_master 22 hours ago [-]
> The researchers successfully tested the robots on phantom heart models that closely mimic a human heart, and on real porcine heart tissue. The robots traveled smoothly and autonomously, even against simulated blood flow.
“In mice” - actually not even.
vlovich123 20 hours ago [-]
I think the researchers and I (and probably most other people) have a different definition of “autonomously”.
ungreased0675 21 hours ago [-]
Not really, as your victim would also need to be in an MRI-like machine for fifteen minutes to an hour.
I do hope this is serious research as well. It’s hard to tell from the outside.
altmanaltman 16 hours ago [-]
Even better, we can disguise it as a routine MRI scan
jurgenburgen 15 hours ago [-]
> routine MRI scan
MRI sounds far from routine to me.
matheusmoreira 14 hours ago [-]
MRI is anything but routine.
raomin 1 days ago [-]
if they manage to drive small robots, they could probably also drive magnetotactic bacteria...!
The doctor that invented the "blood vessel path to the heart for a catheter" was German. He had the idea to try it out, grabbed a regular catheter, inserted it into a blood vessel in his own arm and pushed it in till he felt it in his heart.
He wanted evidence that he had actually done this so he walked to the X-Ray department (he worked at a hospital) and asked them to get him a chest x-ray.
Wild how medicine has progressed.
(This story is from The Body by Bill Bryson)
The main issue is delivering the genetic patch to the tissue you want to fix. Some genes (eg. BRCA) are just really big and can't fit on some vectors, some tissues (eg. brain) are hard to reach, and you want to try to target tissues selectively, since we're not sure yet about side effects like insertional mutagenesis (although it doesn't seem to be a huge problem atm...probably depends on on the vector). A good vector makes a huge difference. Lipid nanoparticles for instance accumulate in the liver and can deliver all kinds of stuff, hence why there are so many studies targeting genetic errors of liver metabolism.
Exotic vectors for normal drugs are usually useless, as it would be too expensive for stuff needing daily or even monthly dosing (as long as it doesn't have a property of selectively targeting cancer). But for single dosage therapies, which gene therapies are, they are a potentially essential tool in the toolbox.
Edit: after writing this comment I just happened to check NEJM, and boom, yet another lipid nanoparticle based gene therapy in phase 3 which tremendous results: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2600931?query=fe...
Linked this to illustrate the point. This is also a good example because the targeted genetic "patch" doesn't actually fix the underlying problem directly (C1 inhibitor deficiency), but goes about fixing the problem in a roundabout way just because that particular way involves the liver, instead of having to deliver the patch to all affected tissues (which in this disease is pretty much all of them). The treatment is thus just hugely effective instead of a complete cure. I personally have dealt with difficult cases of this particular disease in the past, and this treatment is a huge deal.
That’s so cool. It reminds me of being a kid and playing with magnets beneath a sheet of cardboard, using them to invisibly move metal objects on the surface. Is that sort of the principle here?
Jokes apart, can anyone well versed actually tell of this is just a paper for publishing sake or is there any truth to this story ?
“In mice” - actually not even.
I do hope this is serious research as well. It’s hard to tell from the outside.
MRI sounds far from routine to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotactic_bacteria