Recently, Professor Guan Jianguo’s team from the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology For Materials Synthesis and Processing and the International School of Materials Science and Engineering (School of Materials and Microelectronics) of WUT made remarkable progress in the field of micro-/nanorobots, and developed injectable thrombolytic nanorobot. The research results were published in Science Advances, a sub-journal of Science, titled Swarming magnetic nanorobots bio-interfaced by heparinoid-polymer brushes for in vivo safe synergistic thrombolysis, which the official website of Science Advances featured on its home page named as Injectable nanobots deliver drugs for targeted therapies.

Figure 1. Featured Image on the Home Page of Science Advances

The team developed a magnetic drug-delivering thrombolytic nanorobot (HPB-NRs) by modifying heparinoid molecular brushes (PSS) on the surface of superparamagnetic nanoparticles. The PSS on the surface can endow magnetic nanoparticles (MB @ PSS) with high surface charge. These magnetic nanoparticles can be reversibly organized into detachable HPB-NRs clusters under an alternating magnetic field to perform safe targeted therapy for cardiovascular diseases (thrombosis) and to solve fatal problems such as low efficiency and easy bleeding of traditional thrombolytic therapies.

Figure 2. Structure of MB @ PSS Nanoparticles and Targeted Thrombolysis of HPB-NRs Cluster Assembled in Alternating Magnetic Field

This research has laid a foundation for the safe targeted treatment of cardiovascular diseases by nanorobots and brought hope for the future treatment of more challenging cardiovascular diseases, such as cerebral stroke and pulmonary embolism. It is also a forward-looking universal targeted therapy delivery platform that can promote further development of motion-based nanorobots in biomedical applications.

The first author of the paper is Yang Manyi, a doctoral student at the Wuhan University of Technology, Zhang Yaoyu, a master's student at Wuhan University of Science and Technology, as the co-first author and the correspondent authors are Professor Guan Jianguo of Wuhan University of Technology, researcher Mou Fangzhi and Dr. Li Zhi of PLA General Hospital of Central Theater Command.

The team, based at the forefront of international discipline development, has devoted itself to developing micro-/nanorobots since 2012. Up to now, relevant landmark achievements have been published in influential academic journals, including Matter, Sci. Adv., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Natl. Sci. Rev., Chem. Rev., Chem. Soc. Rev., Adv. Mater., Adv. Funct. Mater., ACS Nano and Appl. Phys. Rev., and has obtained several national invention patents.

Link to the article:  https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adk7251

Written by: Huang Linglin, Guan Jianguo

Rewritten by: Mei Mengqi

Edited by: Wang Jingjing, Li Tiantian

Source: Institute of New Materials (State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology For Materials Synthesis and Processing)