[HN Gopher] L.A. startup is building tiny injectable robots to a... ___________________________________________________________________ L.A. startup is building tiny injectable robots to attack tumors Author : thereare5lights Score : 104 points Date : 2021-03-05 09:54 UTC (13 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.latimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com) | endisneigh wrote: | If the robots are small enough isn't this just going back to | pharmacology? What's the difference between a sufficiently tiny | robot and a protein? | [deleted] | asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: | Control, as discussed in the article. You have to distribute a | protein via diffusion through the blood. You can't drive it to | the site of a tumor. Also, the robots are not that small. | Grustaf wrote: | It would be cool if you had magnetic proteins that you could | steer. Or at least magnetically control the release of the | medicine. | mnemotronic wrote: | And the globalist conspiracy theory websites go crazy... | vmception wrote: | I've been approaching this wrong, is that a profitable | audience? It seems like a fairly easy funnel since almost | everyone is susceptible. | neonate wrote: | https://archive.is/QzHCi | Grustaf wrote: | These are quite large though, why wouldn't it work with say a | long needle instead? I was imagining these robots to be small as | cells! | iamben wrote: | Robots really seems the wrong word here, after reading about the | magnets. Especially with the whole anti-vaxxers "Bill Gates is | injecting nanobots in my Covid vaccine" rubbish that's | perpetually doing the rounds on social media of late. | | Edit: it's very cool though! | jvanderbot wrote: | I recall seeing early trials on horse / pigs cadavers at a | robotics conf. The robot is actuated / steered externally using a | closed-loop MRI imager and magnetic field steering. So, the | "robot" isn't exactly miniature if you count all that. Just the | end effector, which is a small blob of metal and plasticy stuff. | Still, really cool. | dehrmann wrote: | Sounds a bit like a magnetic mixer you see in a lab. | mhh__ wrote: | I'm surprised you can't get them for the kitchen. I guess the | torque is probably crap, but still. | refurb wrote: | Yup. Anything bigger than 500mL or anything more vicious | than a water solution gets an overhead stirred in the lab. | | Magnetic stirrers are great for small scale or even larger | scale if it's just mixing water with acid (for example), | but they stop working well after that. | djrogers wrote: | You can - look for a hot chocolate mixing mug or magnetic | mixing mug on {large retail site}. Gave my son one for | Christmas a few years ago cuz he's a nerd like me and | adores hot chocolate. He loves the thing! | pengaru wrote: | Is that the same as a frother? I've seen a streamer use | one on-stream a few times for making frothed chai tea, | and it uses a magnetic coupler... | delecti wrote: | Yeah, I think most "solutions" in the kitchen are far too | concentrated. I wouldn't expect a stirring bar to do much | for stirring dough or any but the thinnest batters. | burmer wrote: | Homebrewers use them, for yeast culturing or making | starters. I guess that's fairly lab-like, but they do it in | kitchens. | tomjakubowski wrote: | https://www.amazon.com/Lab- | Stirrers/b?ie=UTF8&node=318023011 | bredren wrote: | I've had this vision of a set of tiny robots that live in your | stomach and perform some amount of pre-processing of the foods | you eat. | | They would do things like cut food into smaller pieces using | small crab-like arms, digest and render inert sugars that are | well beyond what your body needs and detect if you've eaten | something that is rotten. | tyingq wrote: | _" digest and render inert sugars that are well beyond what | your body needs"_ | | I wonder what the ethical discussion for that looks like, | though I guess we already have Orlistat to flush out ingested | fat. | bredren wrote: | It sure doesn't reflect well on self-restraint. | | One way to look at it is as taking the conveniences that | promote "quality of life" further along the path toward some | yet-to-be-determined limit. | | If people could eat and not only worry less about the | consequences, but also experience less of the consequences | the majority would. | | That said, these "stombots" wouldn't only be for people who | want to eat double-ice cream sundays occasionally. | | If enough sugars could be broken down in the stomach--before | they enter the blood stream, it could help manage type 2 | diabetes upstream. | InitialLastName wrote: | I'm not sure that "Our digestive systems are too inefficient" | is the most important health problem to solve. If anything, in | general our digestive systems appear to be _too_ efficient to | optimize the health outcomes of diets in the developed world. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | Our digestive systems? They suck. | | Part of the problem of our intelligence is that we adapted | our environments to us instead of the other way around. Cats | can eat an all-meat diet. Dogs can do fine on rice and meat. | | Why? | | It's because their bodies produce the vitamins they need to | survive. We created agriculture and had such rich diets that | when we lost our ability to create certain vitamins in our | own bodies, we never even noticed. The genes are still there, | they're just broken. | | "Fixing" that issue would be one of the greatest feats in the | history of humanity. If mankind ever wants to leave this rock | and colonize other worlds, they better figure out how to fix | that problem. Would suck to have a starship travelling for | hundreds of years only to land on a planet suitable for | colonization and realize you ran out of Vitamin C so everyone | is going to die of scurvy. | wbc wrote: | Are you saying agriculture cause humans to lose the ability | to create vitamins (specifically C)? I don't think that is | true, at least according to Nature: | | https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-mystery-of- | vit... | | The article posits the loss of Vitamin C to be much | earlier: | | Notably, not only all humans, but also gorillas, chimps, | orangutans, and some monkeys have this inborn genetic flaw, | meaning that the loss of vitamin C biosynthesis must have | occurred first in one of our primate ancestors. | thaumasiotes wrote: | Guinea pigs also lost the ability to manufacture Vitamin C; | it's hard to blame that on their development of | agriculture. | | It's also not necessary to eat a rich diet to maintain | levels of Vitamin C. Everything alive contains it. (Even | the guinea pigs.) The things that suppress it are probably | things you would associate with "rich food", like cooking | and long storage periods. Eat one onion and you'll get far | more Vitamin C than you need. | ben_w wrote: | > Why? | | None of that. | | Cats are obligate carnivores, their bodies don't produce | taurine. | | And all animals need to eat _something_ because none of us | are photovores. | | And some plants are carnivores. | | If we colonise other worlds, rather than O'Neill habitats | or mind uploads, we're almost certainly taking the farms | with us for the trip, not rely on local stuff. | BitwiseFool wrote: | And, our metabolism depends on Vitamin B12, which is ONLY | made by bacteria. Every plant and animal that needs B12 | has to get it by eating something else with B12 in it, or | having the bacteria responsible in it's digestive tract. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12 | bluGill wrote: | I'm not sure fixing it would be good. Genetics is tricky, | and we don't know what we would lose by fixing that gene. | Loss of intelligence is one trade off I've seen suggested, | but I don't know what would really happen. | mhh__ wrote: | This is something I wonder about quite a lot. If we had a way | of eating food but knowing it was basically just culinary | masturbation so to speak (i.e. no nutrients beyond what is safe | or thin), would we still eat like we do - I'm not particularly | prone to comfort eating, but the psychology behind these things | is fascinating and I would wager the answer is probably no (and | would probably be deeply immoral given that some people starve) | lowdanie wrote: | In some sense you have described our microbiome :) | efficax wrote: | What could go wrong | space_ghost wrote: | It didn't go well on that episode of The Outer Limits. John-Boy | Walton grew eyes in the back of his head. | D-Coder wrote: | That sounds like a plus. :-) | thereisnospork wrote: | When the alternative is terminal cancer not much. | tyingq wrote: | Robots seems like the wrong word, which seems a comfort in the | this case. They mention that both moving it around, and | activating the plunger is done via magnetic fields from outside | the body. It actually sounds relatively "low tech", which perhaps | means faster to approval. | iancmceachern wrote: | They're really just "objects". The real robot is the thing | outside the body controlling the "objects". | greesil wrote: | An object killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. | Sometimes it helps to have a sense of scale on how things are | worded. Also, marketing. | coldcode wrote: | Star Trek called them nanites. | space_ghost wrote: | Also "Nanoprobes." | ajmurmann wrote: | Nanites are tiny robots though and not moved by outside | forces like the thing described by the article. | andi999 wrote: | I like the ones needing outside forces much better. | reaperducer wrote: | As did Mystery Science Theater 3000. I wonder if it's a more | generic term than I realized. | | https://mst3k.fandom.com/wiki/The_Nanites | tyingq wrote: | Was curious about this also. "Brave new words" (Jeff | Prucher) says the Star Trek reference was probably the | earliest. Here's a screenshot from the book: | https://imgur.com/a/UPahc1w | fumar wrote: | I lost my sister to a glioma a few years back. I've always known | that eventually better treatments would become available, but | this is novel and not something I envisioned. I hope it works and | saves children who have these brain tumors. | joedevon wrote: | My condolences :( | topynate wrote: | Interesting that the size of the devices is limited by imaging | technology rather than the ability to fabricate smaller ones. I | guess the trade-off is that imaging small things with X-rays | requires more ionizing radiation. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-05 23:01 UTC)