Nanobots Cure Pneumonia in Mice

Well, that’s an exciting title, but a trifle misleading. Yes, the mice were fully cured of pneumonia but not by nanobots. It was algal cells whose surfaces are speckled with nanoparticles containing antibiotics. A bit of a cheat I admit, but I would never have thought of it. The algal cells migrate through the lungs delivering antibiotics (actually the cell membranes of neutrophiles, which I also would not have thought to do). Looks like this:

Pretty slick, right? The big green bit is the algal cell itself and the crumbly crust is the added cell membranes. The researchers (Wang and Zhang) treated the infected mice directly through their windpipes. Some were treated with this nanobots and got well in a week. The untreated mice died in three days.

I’ve had pneumonia twice; I know how they feel.

Homework: “Nanoparticle-modified microrobots for in vivo antibiotic delivery to treat acute bacterial pneumonia” by Fangyu Zhang, Jia Zhuang, Zhengxing Li, Hua Gong, Berta Esteban-Fernández de Ávila, Yaou Duan, Qiangzhe Zhang, Jiarong Zhou, Lu Yin, Emil Karshalev, Weiwei Gao, Victor Nizet, Ronnie H. Fang, Liangfang Zhang and Joseph Wang, 22 September 2022, Nature Materials. 
DOI: 10.1038/s41563-022-01360-9