Nanobots Start to Move

The technical challenges may take 20 years or more to overcome, but the first steps toward remote-controlled medicine have already begun

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The long-term future envisioned by nanomedicine researchers includes incredibly tiny therapeutic agents that smartly navigate under their own power to a specific target—and only that target—anywhere in the body. On arrival, these self-guided machines may act in any number of ways—from delivering a medicinal payload to providing real-time updates on the status of their disease-fighting progress. Then, having achieved their mission, they will safely biodegrade, leaving little or no trace behind. These so-called nanobots will be made of biocompatible materials, magnetic metals or even filaments of DNA: all materials carefully chosen for their useful properties at the atomic scale, as well as their ability to slip past the body's defenses undisturbed and without triggering any cellular damage.

Although this vision will likely take a decade or two to fulfill, medical researchers have already begun addressing some of the technical problems. One of the biggest challenges is making sure the nanodevices get to their target in the body.

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