NanoMotors Shrink Again; Could Help Fight Cancer

Five-hundred times smaller than a grain of salt, the UT nanomotor was designed to convert electrical energy into mechanical action. Featuring components that are no bigger than a single micrometer, the nanomotor would fit inside a human cell and can reach speeds of 18,000 RPMs for 15 consecutive hours.

While those numbers are impressive enough on their own, they seem like a quantum leap in comparison to the nanomotor’s predecessors. Prior to the development of UT’s new micromachine the best recorded performance was 500RPMs for just a handful of seconds.

In addition to its increased performance, UT researchers believe their new machine could be used to fight cancer or deliver drugs on a cellular level, making disease treatment more targeted and effective.

Though tests are still underway, Professor Donglei “Emma” Fan believes her team is already beginning to see clear signs that their micromotor will one day have an impact much greater than its size. "We were able to establish and control the molecule release rate by mechanical rotation, which means our nanomotor is the first of its kind for controlling the release of drugs from the surface of nanoparticles,” says Fan. "We believe it will help advance the study of drug delivery and cell-to-cell communications."

In the near future, Fan and her team will begin more intensive testing of their nanomotor to determine how precisely it can deploy drugs to cells. If current or future iterations of the UT motor can be tuned to deliver drugs to specific locations, scores of nanomotor-enabled nanobots could one day be used to detect and apply drugs exactly where they’re needed. Taken in pill form, millions of nanobots could even make cancer or other cellular diseases a thing of the past.

Image Courtesy of University of Texas