Revolutionizing Diabetes Treatment with Edible Nanobots

A human hair is about 50,000 -- 100,000 nanometers wide. Scientist Tejal Desai has invented and produced nanobots varying from a few nanometers to tens of nanometers in size. (This is smaller than even a typical germ, which measures 1,000 nanometers.) Desai is a pioneer of nanotechnology, employing the technology to smooth the way for more effective diabetes treatment, and even to improve eye surgery. Furthermore, Desai has recently developed an interesting approach to nanobot implantation/drug delivery: edible technology.

Diabetes Treatment

Desai and nanobots are something like a match made in heaven. She originally began to research possibilities for nanotechnology when she was challenged by professor Mauro Ferrari to come up with a way for sufferers of diabetes to regulate their insulin without the nuisance of injections. Desai considered an innovative vehicle for drug delivery: a tiny, howllow piece of silicon that was perforated like swiss cheese. Inside the silicon, she packed pancreas cells, which would be released through the holes of the silicon at controlled intervals. Initially, this technology was tested on lab rats, and the reason why the nanotechnology worked successfully was because "the holes were large enough for the insulin to diffuse out, but small enough that the pancreas cells stayed inside, and the rat's immune agents-which would normally mark the cells as foreign and attack them-could not enter" (Source: "PopSci's 2nd Annual Brilliant 10" ). Armed with this technology, diabetic patients may be able to maintain stable insulin levels within their bodies without ever having to spike their systems with daily injections.

Recently, Desai's ideas have become even simpler: drug delivery is something that can be easily swallowed. Who knows, maybe in the future, she can even create FLAVORED nanobots.

Eye Surgery

Desai has stated that eyes are "ideal for nanotechnology," because they are confined systems that cannot be easily improved with more large-scale, clumsy types of eye surgery. Ailing eyes, it seems, cry out for nanotechnological solutions (Source: "Nanostructured Interfaces for Therapeutic Delivery," Cornell University Lecture).

Her interest is specifically centered on the back of the eye, which is where macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy occur. She insists that nanotechnology can provide much more effective and less-intrusive cures to these diseases than present eye therapies which involve injecting the eyes of patients with solutions every month for 2 and a half years (Source: Ibid).

Desai's research has suggested that polymer scaffolds can be useful in regenerating damaged eye tissue. these scaffolds help direct other cells to come to the aid of the injured area since they can "influence retinal progenitor cell attachment, promote differentiation and provide a physical guide for normal anatomical organisation of the cells" (Source: "Retinal Repair" ).

Heart & Cancer Cures

In a late 2007 video lecture, Desai confirms that her team of researchers has been experiementing to try to regenerate cardiac tissue using nanotechnology. She is also concerned with correcting impairments of the skeletal system, with orthopedic uses of nanotechnology. Conceivably, her research may even someday facilitate repair of brain tissue, with the use of nanoparticles. More practically, suggests chicagobussiness.com, her research focuses on cell and tissue analysis aimed at helping not only diabetics but cancer patients as well.

Trying to cure cancer? Such a chore is not easily accomplished by 99.9% of our population, but perhaps for Tejal Desai such a chore may be possible.

Sources:

http://www.nanooze.org/english/articles/article4_howbigisananometer.html
http://www.canon.com/technology/s_labo/nano/001/01/002.html
http://www.dailycal.org/article/15896/grad_s_breakthrough_artificial_pancreas_may_help_d
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2003-08/popscis-2nd-annual-brilliant-10?page=3
http://cnfx.cnf.cornell.edu/mediasite/viewer/NoPopupRedirector.aspx?peid=d9f99293-4ce4-4e08-a733-98ba789a2f65&shouldResize=False#
http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/cb/Volume/2007/6/Retinal_repair.asp
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?portal_id=35&page_id=132&seenIt=1