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Swedish scientists have discovered how to use nanorobots to target and kill cancer cells.

Made of amino acids, the tiny robots can be injected into the body. They can activate ‘death receptors’ in cells, helping to shrink tumors. All cells have death receptors, so the main obstacle has been finding a way for the robots to identify the harmful cancer cells, rather than attacking healthy cells and cancerous ones alike.

How do the robots identify cancer cells?

“This hexagonal nanopattern of peptides becomes a lethal weapon,” Professor Björn Högberg, who led the study, told Metro. “If you were to administer it as a drug, it would indiscriminately start killing cells in the body, which would not be good. To get around this problem, we have hidden the weapon inside a nanostructure built from DNA.”

Meet CARMEN, short for Cognitively Assistive Robot for Motivation and Neurorehabilitation–a small, tabletop robot designed to help people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) learn skills to improve memory, attention, and executive functioning at home.

Unlike other robots in this space, CARMEN was developed by the research team at the University of California San Diego in collaboration with clinicians, people with MCI, and their care partners. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, CARMEN is also the only robot that teaches compensatory cognitive strategies to help improve memory and executive function.

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