Now robo-sperms to serve as cost-effective and efficient way of drug delivery

These wonder robo-sperms that look alike human sperm cells and travel like them can be used for better, cost-friendly drug delivery among humans.

Sperm like robots to serve as amazing drug delivery system © Shutterstock

Scientists in the United Kingdom are now working towards a breakthrough in drug delivery and get ready to hold your breath for their awesome method. They have sought help of human sperm in order to design the ultimate swimming robot, highlights recent media reports. These flea-size drones are reportedly made of tiny magnetic head and squiggly elastic tail. While they look alike their spermy counterparts, unlike them, these swimming robots are guided by shifting electromagnetic currents and controlled externally by the scientists. The study was published in the journal, Physics of Fluids. Researchers say that these robo-sperms can serve as efficient and cost effective template for drug-delivery systems for human patients.

"The swimmers could one day be used to direct drugs to the right areas of the body by swimming through blood vessels. Developing this technology could radically change the way we do medicine," reportedly said Feodor Ogrin , a lecturer at the University of Exeter in England and co-author of this new study. The researchers believe that they have been able to achieve a considerably reasonable design as the tails can be made with simple, 3D-printed molds. Also, they have been able to hit the perfect head-to-tail ratio, highlights the media report.

Explaining the technology based on which these robo-sperms have been made, scientists say that they have been built with tails ranging from 0.04 inch to 0.5-inch-long and they were set loose in fluids of varying viscosity and pushed forward with electromagnetic currents of several intensities. Similar to how a sperm cell whips and undulates its tail to propel forward, these robo-sperms follow the path of the current with tails whipping behind them, say the scientists.