Teamwork Making Dreamwork

Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death today in the U.S. and it is a disease that we are continuously finding ways to prolong and prevent. Another disease to take into consideration for a considerable amount of people in the U.S. is sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell anemia is a disease caused by a mutated hemoglobin protein within red blood cells that alter the form of red blood cells to make them turn into a sickle shaped, hard, red blood cell. Along with delivering less oxygen to your body's tissues, sickle cell anemia is a problem because the hard and awkward shape of the cell can cause clots within blood vessels to interrupt blood flow, causing complications within the patient.

Science has come up with a possible solution to these problems. Ayusman Sen and colleagues from Pennsylvania State University have created a self-propelling spider like micromachine that is powered by chemicals that interact with the Grubbs catalyst attached to the sphere of the micromachine. This micromachine is an exciting prospect for patients with cardivascular disease and sickle cell anemia disease  because this little spider like machine can possibly one day help remove plaque within patients with cardiovascular disease or target red blood cells with faulty proteins and either destroy the hemoglobin S proteins or repair the genome of those cells. The micromachine is far from homing in on these specific problems but the scientists are hoping that they can attach nanorobots to the spider machine and use the nanorobots to home in on certain chemicals, through chemotaxis, and dispense a certain drug to fix whatever the spider needs to fix.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20867-selfdirected-microspider-could-repair-blood-vessels.html