Flagellated Magnetotactic Bacteria as Controlled MRI-trackable Propulsion and Steering Systems for Medical Nanorobots Operating in the Human Microvasculature

By S. Martel, M. Mohammadi, O. Felfoul, Zhao Lu, P. Pouponneau. Int. J. Robotics Res., 2009

440 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although nanorobots may play critical roles for many applications in the human body, such as targeting tumoral lesions for therapeutic purposes, miniaturization of the power source with an effective onboard controllable propulsion and steering system have prevented the implementation of such mobile robots. Here, we show that the flagellated nanomotors combined with the nanometer-sized magnetosomes of a single magnetotactic bacterium can be used as an effective integrated propulsion and steering system for devices, such as nanorobots, designed for targeting locations only accessible through the smallest capillaries in humans while being visible for tracking and monitoring purposes using modern medical imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging. Through directional and magnetic field intensities, the displacement speeds, directions, and behaviors of swarms of these bacterial actuators can be controlled from an external computer.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/61a2db8b7067869c00e77c893b9d747f2ba79cfd

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Biomedical Engineering

1. Metin Sitti
2. Jake J. Abbott
3. Bradley J. Nelson
4. Ioannis K. Kaliakatsos
5. Nariman Farsad
6. Paolo Dario
7. Andrew W. Eckford
8. Arianna Menciassi

In Condensed Matter Physics

1. Metin Sitti
2. Jake J. Abbott
3. Bradley J. Nelson
4. Ioannis K. Kaliakatsos
5. Eric D. Diller
6. S. Michelin

In Molecular Biology

1. Bradley J. Nelson
2. Nariman Farsad
3. Metin Sitti
4. Rashid Bashir
5. Huseyin Birkan Yilmaz

Citations in the corpus

• A Comprehensive Survey of Recent Advancements in Molecular Communication (2014, background): “Tracking and controlling of swarms of these bacterias are demonstrated in [124].”
• Microrobots for minimally invasive medicine. (2010, background): “Martel and colleagues (72) recently demonstrated that a clinical MRI system can be used to localize and control a swarm of magnetotactic bacteria (MTB).”
• Biohybrid actuators for robotics: A review of devices actuated by living cells (2017, background): “This characteristic has fostered the application of these robots in the vascular network as drug delivery systems (16, 17).”