The reality of the moment has not yet surpassed science fiction if we talk about adventures like the movie 'The prodigious chip', in which Dennis Quaid was miniaturized with a motorized capsule that traveled inside animals and people. But we can not avoid remembering this film when we learn that they have managed to apply a treatment with micromotors in living organisms for the first time.
These organisms were not human beings (the last phase of tests in a study), but mice that in this case suffered a bacterial infection in the stomach. But instead of taking an antibiotic treatment with tablets or in the usual ways what they have received is a dose of micromotors with the ability to release the drug in the right place.
No spark plugs or horses, but with titanium
Maybe the first doubt that comes to mind is what is that of a "micromotor". Although it sounds technical to us we have to leave aside mechanical and electronic, given that micromotors are molecular complexes composed of several compounds, having in this case a magnesium structure, a titanium oxide coating, clarithromycin (an antibiotic) combined with PLGA (a biodegradable polymer) and chitosan.
The particularity they have is that they are able to move through a medium releasing a load, in this case the antibiotic. But unlike those DNA nanocamps that we saw a while ago in this case it is not a point discharge at a specific point, but in the gradual ejection arrived at a certain environment.
And what the team of scientists at the University of California San Diego (La Jolla, United States) has achieved is that this environment is a living organism, being the first time it is done this way and not in in vitro environments. Work that they have just published in Nature in which they detail how the micromotors released clarithromycin in the stomach of the mice so that they experienced a reduction of the bacterial population much greater than that of drugs with passive effect (that is, they do not release active way like micromotors) without causing toxicity.
In addition, one of the advantages of micromotors is that they do not need a joint administration of proton pump inhibitors, a type of drug that reduces the production of gastric acid so that the antibiotic has more effect but may have long-term side effects. term (sometimes known as stomach protectors, such as omeprazole, one of the most common). In fact, stomach acid becomes the fuel of these micromotors and also ends up reducing the environment (of acid) without modifying the behavior of the cells (that is, without inhibiting the proton pumps).
A small journey for a micromotor, a great step for future therapies
Sometimes treatments are difficult beyond the toxic agent itself due to how difficult it is to get the drug, either by location, by the environment or once in contact with the cell. Hence, as technology has progressed and specifically nanoengineering has tried to create more efficient and advanced forms of administration, starting with structures such as lipospheres (within which the compound is housed) and going towards the composition of this type of micro-machines.
An idea already expressed by the scientists of the DNA nanocampaigns that we mentioned before, that is to say, that in the end all these studies lead us to the creation of molecular machines that allow to take a drug to its destination in the most innocuous way possible for the patient . Still remains to be done, but if these microscopic "machines" have been able to work in living organisms (with no side effects, in addition) perhaps we are a little closer to taking a micromotor every eight hours and not a tablet.