Robotics Mini robot to deliver medication to the brain
A new robot from ETH Zurich is designed to fight diseases inside the body. Researchers can control the device, which is less than two millimeters in size, through blood vessels - for example, to deliver medication to blocked brain vessels.
13.11.2025, 20:00
SDA
The robot has not yet been tested on humans. However, it worked in tests on pigs and a sheep, as the researchers reported on Thursday evening in the journal "Science".
Medical research has long been trying to develop methods to deliver drugs exactly where they are needed, as ETH Zurich explained in a press release on the study. Today, many diseases, such as strokes or tumors, require high doses of medication to be administered and distributed throughout the body. Among other things, this increases the risk of side effects.
The new robot is intended to solve this problem. It consists of a spherical gel capsule in which medication can be embedded. The researchers have equipped this capsule with iron oxide nanoparticles that can be controlled from the outside using magnetic fields.
Heat releases drug
According to the ETH, the researchers combined three different magnetic navigation strategies with which they can navigate the robot in all regions of the head arteries.
"It's incredible how much blood is pumped through our vessels and at what speed. Our navigation system has to be able to withstand all of this," ETH researcher and first author of the study Fabian Landers was quoted as saying in the university's press release.
At the destination, the capsule is then heated by a high-frequency magnetic field, causing the gel structure to dissolve and release the medication.
To enable doctors to follow how the capsule moves, the researchers have also equipped it with a contrast agent. They used tantalum nanoparticles, which are frequently used in medicine, but are more difficult to control because they are heavier.
