“Big Hero” in Reality? New Medical Microbot Cures Pneumonia

When the movie “Big Hero” first came out to screen in 2014, miniature sized controllable robots were considered as a technology of faraway future. However, only 8 years after the movie, the scientists and nano engineers were able to bring the idea into reality. Recently, the researchers of California San Diego University developed robots that were small enough to go in and swim around the lung, while successfully delivering medication and clearing the pneumonia bacterias. In the example they conducted, the mice infected with pneumonia were divided into two groups while one group received the medical treatment through microbots while the other group did not. As a result, the mice treated with these microbots had shown a survival rate of 100%, while the mice without the treatment had all died within three days. I have chosen microbots as my topic because I believe this technology could open a new chapter in the medical and pharmacy industry and treatment.

The prime function of the microbot is its ability to effectively deliver antibiotics. Compared to previously used IV injection, the microbot required an amount of only 1 out of 3000 antibiotics to have the equivalent effect, which means that it had much higher efficiency and could deliver the medicine straightly into the ill part while infecting the rest of your body, lowering the risk for medication tolerance and side effects. Also, I personally think that these microbots in the future would also be able to transport stuff other than medicines to our body, which could include nutrients or hormones which could be a step towards solving a currently incurable disease like hair loss, growth problem, or Alzheimer’s.

Being in direct control of our body without cutting it open is a novel concept that deserves much more attention. Before, we were only able to try to positively influence our body conditions by using drugs or going through specific action protocols, which means that we had only limited control over what’s going inside our body. However, it is evident that having closer access and being able to manipulate it more easily through a microbot is far more advantageous in manipulating our body condition while also allowing us to have a continuous diagnosis of our health. As an example, for people who have chronic illness, having a microbot implanted in their body would allow them to constantly monitor the conditions and risks, also being able to take immediate medical actions needed using the microbots.

Many organizations are working to bring the microbots into actual use, and a company called ‘Microbot Medical’ is currently the forerunner in this race to commercialize the technology. Microbot Medical is a company that has its business running in the USA and Israel are working to, according to the explanation provided by the business’s website homepage, “break down barriers to access through single-use robotic technology focused on the Endovascular space” (microbotmedical.com). The effort to develop microbots for medical usage is also taking place here in South Korea. This work started back in 2008, when the Robot Research Initiative (RRI) of Jeonnam University was established in order to conduct further research about the microbot technology. Currently, the institution that inherited RRI is an independent research foundation called KIMIRo, and from its founding in 2019, the institution has achieved several major accomplishments such as using microbots to restore cartilage or perform an endoscopy.

The research about microbots is non-stop and the form of microbots is evolving even at this moment. For example, microbots in liquid status have recently been developed, and are expected to be effective in performing delicate medical treatment. Following this trend of microbot development, it seems like that in the near future, we would be able to witness microbots being used in diverse medical areas.