Speaker 1: Welcome to the Sentient Code, where intelligence is engineered, autonomy
Speaker 1: is emerging, and a line between human and machine grows thinner.
Speaker 1: Each episode, we decode the algorithms, explore the robotics, and
Speaker 1: examine the ideas shaping the future of artificial minds.
Speaker 2: I want you to imagine a scenario for a second.
Speaker 2: You are sitting in a doctor's office, and you've just
Speaker 2: been diagnosed with a pretty severe medical condition.
Speaker 3: Right, like a localized tumor, or maybe a dangerous blood
Speaker 3: clot lodged somewhere deep in a really hard to reach
Speaker 3: area of your brain.
Speaker 2: Exactly and normally, you know, this is the part where
Speaker 2: you prepare for weeks of just pure anxiety. You picture
Speaker 2: being wheeled into this freezing, sterile operating room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, being put under heavy anesthesia.
Speaker 2: Right, and enduring this super invasive surgery that will probably
Speaker 2: leave you recovering for months. But instead of handing you
Speaker 2: a massive stack of pre paperwork, your doctor just hands
Speaker 2: you a simple glass of water and a single tiny pill.
Speaker 3: Which is crazy to even picture.
Speaker 2: It is you swallow it, and inside that pill is
Speaker 2: this fleet of microscopic, completely autonomous machines. They just navigate
Speaker 2: directly through your bloodstream, hunt down the exact coordinates of
Speaker 2: the disease cells, and deliver a highly targeted payload of medication.
Speaker 3: And then they heat themselves up just enough to destroy
Speaker 3: the tumor.
Speaker 2: Yes, and after all that, they just well, they dissolve
Speaker 2: into absolutely nothing.
Speaker 3: I mean, it sounds like pure science fiction, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: The idea of like shrinking an entire surgical team down
Speaker 3: to the size of a molecule and sending them in
Speaker 3: to do the work.
Speaker 2: From the inside, it really does.
Speaker 3: We've been dreaming about that kind of autonomous internal medicine
Speaker 3: for gosh decades, but it's always felt like a total fantasy.
Speaker 2: But that is exactly what makes our exploration today so
Speaker 2: mind blowing, because this isn't the fantasy anymore. This is
Speaker 2: the reality of a massive breakthrough innovation known as trimag
Speaker 2: micro robot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a huge leap forward in minimally invasive medicine,
Speaker 3: it really is.
Speaker 2: And this technology was developed primarily by a system professor
Speaker 2: Jinxing Lie and his team at Michigan State University, alongside
Speaker 2: some amazing partners like henry Ford Health and Arizona State University.
Speaker 3: The collaboration there is just fantastic truly.
Speaker 2: And you know, if you are someone who is endlessly
Speaker 2: fascinated by cutting edge tech, or if you're just someone
Speaker 2: who absolutely hates the idea of invasive surgery, which.
Speaker 3: Let's be honest, is literally all of us.
Speaker 2: Right who wants surgery. Yeah, this technology is fundamentally going
Speaker 2: to change how you experience healthcare in the future. So okay,
Speaker 2: let's unpack this because before we can even begin to
Speaker 2: understand how these micro robots cured diseases, we have to
Speaker 2: understand how something physically smaller than a single human hair
Speaker 2: is even built.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The fabrication process itself is an absolute marvel of
Speaker 3: modern engineering because I mean, you can't just put these
Speaker 3: things together on a tiny microscopic assembly line.
Speaker 2: There are no tiny wrenches involved exactly.
Speaker 3: So the team at Michigan State University's IQ three D
Speaker 3: printing core utilizes this highly advanced technique. It's called two
Speaker 3: photon polymerization.
Speaker 2: Okay, two photon polymerization. That sounds in taps.
Speaker 3: It is. It's essentially a high precision three D printing method,
Speaker 3: but it operates on principles of quantum physics and photochemistry.
Speaker 2: So wait, instead of layering melted plastic like a normal
Speaker 2: desktop three D printer you'd have at home. Yeah, how
Speaker 2: does two photon polymerization actually work using light? Right?
Speaker 3: Exactly? You start with a vat of liquid biocompatible hydrogel. Specifically,
Speaker 3: they use these polymers known as PEGDA and PEDA.
Speaker 2: Okay, pegda and PEDA. Got it.
Speaker 3: Now, if you shine a normal laser into this liquid,
Speaker 3: the whole path of the beam might just harden. But
Speaker 3: with two photon polymerization, they use these highly focused near
Speaker 3: infrared femtosecond lasers.
Speaker 2: Ooh, femtosecond, so incredibly fast pulses of light.
Speaker 3: Super fast, and the chemical reaction that turns the liquid
Speaker 3: into a solid plastic, well, it only happens at the
Speaker 3: exact microscopic focal point where two photons hit the same
Speaker 3: molecule at the exact same time.
Speaker 2: Wait, really, so you could effectively sculpt a solid object
Speaker 2: floating right in the middle of a pool of liquid
Speaker 2: just by crossing lasers at a microscopic point.
Speaker 3: That's exactly it.
Speaker 2: That is just wild. And let me jump in on
Speaker 2: the materials here, because the choice of PEGNA and PEDA
Speaker 2: isn't just random plastic right. These are hydrogels, right, which
Speaker 2: is crucial because if you look air molecular structure, they
Speaker 2: form this highly cross linked, three dimensional web. They are
Speaker 2: basically microscopic.
Speaker 3: Sponges, yes, exactly.
Speaker 2: They're designed to absorb and hold vast amounts of water
Speaker 2: or in this specific case, liquid medication without actually dissolving.
Speaker 2: So you aren't just printing a hard piece of plastic.
Speaker 2: You're printing a bio friendly, absorbent scaffold.
Speaker 3: That is a perfect way to describe it. It's a
Speaker 3: functional scaffold. And the physical shape they're sculpting with those
Speaker 3: lasers is incredible specific too.
Speaker 2: Right, they don't look like what you'd expect.
Speaker 3: No, they don't look like tiny submarines with little propellers.
Speaker 3: They are helical. They basically look like microscopic corkscrews.
Speaker 2: Which honestly makes perfect biological sense because if you look
Speaker 2: at bacteria, like the oldest swimmers of the planet, they
Speaker 2: don't use propellers.
Speaker 3: No they don't.
Speaker 2: They use bacterial flagella, you know, those little whip like
Speaker 2: corkscrew tails. And the reason for that really comes down
Speaker 2: to the physics of moving at a microscopic scale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the physics get really weird down there totally.
Speaker 2: If you or I jump into a swimming pool. Water
Speaker 2: feels fluid, right, we can push through it pretty easily.
Speaker 2: But to a microscopic robot, the physics completely.
Speaker 3: Change, right because of their size.
Speaker 2: Exactly because they're so small, the fluid dynamics what scientists
Speaker 2: call a low Reynolds number environment. Yeah, means blood or
Speaker 2: cellular matrix feels incredibly thick and viscous.
Speaker 3: To them, like trying to swim through a pool of thick.
Speaker 2: Molasses exactly, molasses or honey. It's so dense for.
Speaker 3: Them, precisely so a tiny propeller would just get stuck
Speaker 3: or create useless turbulence. The helical corkscrew shape is mathematically
Speaker 3: and biologically the most efficient way to physically propel through
Speaker 3: that kind of dense environment.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we have a microscopic medicine soeled sponge shaped
Speaker 2: like a bacterial quarkscrew.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's the chassis.
Speaker 2: But I have to push back here because this is
Speaker 2: where my brain just starts to short circuit. If these
Speaker 2: structures are smaller than a strand of hair, how on
Speaker 2: earth do they fit a motor inside them to make
Speaker 2: that quark screw spin? Like? Where's the battery.
Speaker 3: That is always the most intuitive question to ask, and
Speaker 3: the answer is honestly brilliant. They don't.
Speaker 2: They don't have a motor.
Speaker 3: There is no internal motor whatsoever. There are no tiny batteries,
Speaker 3: no microscopic years, and absolutely no tethers, wires or catheters
Speaker 3: connecting them to the outside world.
Speaker 2: Seriously, seriously, they are completely untethered and entirely passive on
Speaker 2: the inside.
Speaker 3: So how do they move if there's no motor, how
Speaker 3: are they swimming through the molasses?
Speaker 2: They are driven entirely by extra ternal magnetic field. Oh magnets,
Speaker 2: of course, right When doctors apply a precisely controlled rotating
Speaker 2: magnetic field around the patient's entire body, the robots basically
Speaker 2: catch that magnetic wave.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm picturing it.
Speaker 2: As the external field rotates in the room, the robots
Speaker 2: spin in sync with it, literally corkscrewing their way through
Speaker 2: bodily fluids, tissues, and narrow anatomical passages.
Speaker 3: That is insane. The motor isn't in the robot. The
Speaker 3: motor is the room the patient is sitting in exactly.
Speaker 2: The external magnets are doing all the heavy lifting.
Speaker 3: But hold on, if we are just driving them with
Speaker 3: giant magnets from the outside. That brings up a massive
Speaker 3: logical problem, which is, how do doctors know where these
Speaker 3: things are? I mean, the inside of the human body
Speaker 3: is dark, it's dense, it's constantly moving.
Speaker 2: Right, It's a very noisy environment. Yeah. So if you
Speaker 2: have a fleet of hair thin corkscrews swimming through someone's liver,
Speaker 2: how do you track them without them just getting hopelessly lost.
Speaker 3: This is exactly what separates this specific break through from
Speaker 3: earlier generations of micro robots. Historically, that was the exact problem.
Speaker 3: They would just get lost in dense biological tissue.
Speaker 2: So how did Jinxinglize team solve it?
Speaker 3: The solution is right in the name of the technology trimag.
Speaker 3: It stands for three distinct magnetic functions integrated into one
Speaker 3: single package.
Speaker 2: Ah okay, three functions, right.
Speaker 3: So we've just covered the first one, which is magnetic
Speaker 3: actuation or movement. To solve the tracking problem, they utilize
Speaker 3: the second function, magnetic particle imaging or MPI.
Speaker 2: MPI okay, and they achieve.
Speaker 3: This by baking magnetic nanoparticles directly into the hydrogel sponge
Speaker 3: while it is being three D printed with the lasers.
Speaker 2: Here's where It gets really interesting because if you ask
Speaker 2: anyone how we look inside the human body, the first
Speaker 2: answer is always an MRI, Right, a magnetic resonance imaging machine.
Speaker 3: Sure, that's the standard.
Speaker 2: But MRIs have a fatal flaw when it comes to
Speaker 2: tracking micro robots. An MRI is fundamentally designed to look
Speaker 2: at the protons in water exactly, And because the human
Speaker 2: body is mostly water and these hydrogel robots are also
Speaker 2: filled with water, trying to spot one with an MRI
Speaker 2: is basically impossible.
Speaker 3: It's completely washed out.
Speaker 2: Right. Think about it, like trying to find a perfectly
Speaker 2: clear glass bead dropped into the bottom of a massive
Speaker 2: swimming pool. The image gets completely obscured. The background noise
Speaker 2: of your own biology just drowns out the tiny robot.
Speaker 3: What a fantastic analogy, and you are absolutely right that
Speaker 3: background tissue interference has plagued microscopic navigation for years.
Speaker 2: So how does MPI fix the glass bead problem?
Speaker 3: Well, this brings us to the genius of the MPI system.
Speaker 3: During that two photon polymerization printing process we talked about,
Speaker 3: the researchers embed nanoparticles of a compound called magnetite.
Speaker 2: Magnetite which is three four.
Speaker 3: That's the one. So basically tiny specks of highly magnetic
Speaker 3: iron oxide.
Speaker 2: Okay, so iron rust basically, but magnetic.
Speaker 3: What's fascinating here is how an MPI scanner interacts with
Speaker 3: that magnetite. Compared to an MRI, an MPI scanner operates
Speaker 3: on a a completely different physical principle. How so it
Speaker 3: measures the nonlinear magnetization of those specific superpaaramagnetic iron oxide particles.
Speaker 3: In simple terms, it doesn't care about water at all.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, It.
Speaker 3: Completely ignores biological tissues. It only detects the magnetic tracer.
Speaker 2: So going back to the swimming pool analogy, using NPI
Speaker 2: isn't looking for a clear glass bead anymore. It's like
Speaker 2: turning off all the lights in the pool completely and
Speaker 2: looking for a bead that is glowing like a blinding
Speaker 2: neon sign.
Speaker 3: Exactly. The background biology is entirely rendered black on the
Speaker 3: scan and the magnetite nanoparticles shine brightly.
Speaker 2: That's incredibly clever, it really is.
Speaker 3: This provides clinicians with real time, high resolution three dimensional
Speaker 3: imaging with submillimeter tracking accuracy.
Speaker 2: So a billimeter that's precise.
Speaker 3: Extremely It allows them to see exactly where the robots
Speaker 3: are and exactly what direction they're facing, even in incredibly
Speaker 3: deep dense organs like the brain or the back of
Speaker 3: the eye, with literally zero biological interference.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's take a breath and look at what we
Speaker 2: have so far. We can drive them through dense tissue
Speaker 2: using external rotating magnets yep, and we can see them
Speaker 2: with pinpoint submillimeter accuracy using this NPI neon sigin effect,
Speaker 2: so we have a fully functional visible remote controlled submarine.
Speaker 2: We do, but seeing and driving the robots is only
Speaker 2: half the battle. Right Once they actually reach the target.
Speaker 2: Let's say they arrive at a cluster of dangerous cancer cells,
Speaker 2: what is their actual mechanism for healing?
Speaker 3: Right, Because they can't just bump into the cancer exactly.
Speaker 2: They're way too small to carry microscopic scalpels. They can't
Speaker 2: physically punch the cancer cells to death.
Speaker 3: This brings us to the third magnetic function of the
Speaker 3: TRIMAG system and the second type of nanoparticle that they
Speaker 3: embed into the hydrogel during printing.
Speaker 2: Okay, what's the second particle?
Speaker 3: CoFe two four or cobalt ferret cobalt ferret, got it.
Speaker 3: These specific nanoparticles have a very unique physical property when
Speaker 3: exposed to a totally different type of magnetic stimulation.
Speaker 2: From the rotating field that drives them exactly.
Speaker 3: Once the robot is parked perfectly next to the tumor,
Speaker 3: the clinicians switch from a rotating magnetic field to an
Speaker 3: alternating magnetic field.
Speaker 2: Okay, I need to understand the physics of that. How
Speaker 2: does an alternating magnetic field turn into a weapon against
Speaker 2: a tumor?
Speaker 3: It comes down to a phenomenon known as magnetic histeroresis
Speaker 3: or neal relaxation. Neal relaxation alternating magnetic field is one
Speaker 3: that rapidly flips its polarity back and forth thousands of
Speaker 3: times a second, north south, north south, incredibly fast.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the field is just vibrating basically exactly.
Speaker 3: And when you expose cobalt ferret to that rapidly flipping field,
Speaker 3: the internal magnetic poles of those specific nanoparticles are forced
Speaker 3: to constantly realign themselves to keep up with the external room.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see, they're desperately flipping back and forth inside
Speaker 2: the robot.
Speaker 3: Yes, all that rapid microscopic movement creates intense internal friction,
Speaker 3: and just like rubbing your hands, together really fast on
Speaker 3: a cold day. That friction heat.
Speaker 2: Wait, wait, I have to stop you there. If we
Speaker 2: are exposing cobalt ferret to rapidly alternating magnetic fields and
Speaker 2: generating heat through microscopic friction, we are basically microwaving iron
Speaker 2: particles inside the human body.
Speaker 3: Essentially, Yes, aren't we.
Speaker 2: Risking cooking the healthy tissue right next to the tumor.
Speaker 2: That sounds super dangerous.
Speaker 3: It's a very valid concern, and safety is absolutely paramount here.
Speaker 3: But this is exactly where the concept of theirynostics comes
Speaker 3: into play.
Speaker 2: Their gnostics, so therapy and diagnostics combined.
Speaker 3: You nailed it. It's the seamless simultaneous combination of therapy
Speaker 3: and diagnostics. Because the NPI tracking we just talked about
Speaker 3: is so unbelievably accurate. The doctors know the exact submillimeter
Speaker 3: location of the micro robots. They do not turn on
Speaker 3: that alternating heat generating magnetic field until they can visually
Speaker 3: confirm that the robots are positioned precisely inside or directly
Speaker 3: adjacent to the diseased cells.
Speaker 2: Oh, I get it. So the heating is perfectly isolated
Speaker 2: to the exact coordinates of the tumor.
Speaker 3: Exactly this process is called magneto thermal hyperthermia. The internal
Speaker 3: friction of the cobalt ferret rapidly raises the localized temperature
Speaker 3: to about forty two to forty five degrees celsius, which
Speaker 3: is pretty hot. It's highly specific. It is hot enough
Speaker 3: to effectively ablate or destroy the targeted tumor cells, causing
Speaker 3: them to break down.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: But because the heat source is microscopic and perfectly positioned,
Speaker 3: it dissipates almost instantly, completely sparing the surrounding healthy tissue.
Speaker 2: That is an incredible level of thermal control. You're basically
Speaker 2: burning out the cancer one microstopic cell at a time.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly precise.
Speaker 2: But earlier we talked about how the robot itself is
Speaker 2: made of a hydrogel sponge. So it's not just a
Speaker 2: heating element.
Speaker 3: No, it's definitely not. The hydrogel structure is a vital
Speaker 3: part of the therapy itself. Before the robot is deployed
Speaker 3: into your body, that microscopic sponge can be loaded with
Speaker 3: specific therapeutic payloads like drugs. Yes, we are talking about
Speaker 3: highly concentrated chemotherapy, drugs, therapeutics, or even regenerative compounds.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you aren't just heating the tumor.
Speaker 3: No, as the hydrogel heats up and interacts with the
Speaker 3: cellular environment, it kind of squeezes, and it releases maximum
Speaker 3: strength medication directly onto the surface of the disease cells.
Speaker 2: Which completely bypasses the absolute nightmare of traditional systemic treatments.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Think about it, when you or a loved one gets
Speaker 2: chemotherapy intravenously, that highly toxic drug just goes everywhere in
Speaker 2: your blood stream. It hits your hair, follicles, your stomach,
Speaker 2: lining you're perfectly healthy organs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the collateral damage is awful.
Speaker 2: That is exactly why patients experience such severe agonizing side effects,
Speaker 2: the constant nausea, the immune suppression, the hair loss. But
Speaker 2: with this trimag system, the chemotherapy is effectively trapped inside
Speaker 2: the hydrogel sponge until it reaches the exact coordinates of
Speaker 2: the tumor.
Speaker 3: It is the ultimate form of targeted drug delivery. It
Speaker 3: dramatically minimizes those devastating systemic side effects because the healthy
Speaker 3: parts of your body are simply never exposed to the drug.
Speaker 2: So with this incredibly precise seek heat and medicate capability,
Speaker 2: how will this actually change the specific procedures you or
Speaker 2: eye might have to undergo in the future.
Speaker 3: The clinical applications are vast.
Speaker 2: Let's think ophthalmology for example. Okay, imagine you have a
Speaker 2: severe eye condition like diabetic retinopathy or macular edema. The
Speaker 2: current gold standard for treatment often involves a doctor taking
Speaker 2: a terrifyingly large needle and injecting medication directly into the
Speaker 2: vitreous humor of your eye.
Speaker 3: Which nobody wants.
Speaker 2: It's horrible, It is incredibly uncomfortable, it causes immense anxiety,
Speaker 2: and it carries real risks of secondary infection. With this technology,
Speaker 2: instead of a needle, it could literally just be an
Speaker 2: outpatient application of eye drops containing these robots stick to
Speaker 2: drop in the eye. Yeah, you blink them in and
Speaker 2: the external magnets seamlessly guide them through the dense fluid
Speaker 2: of your eye to the exact spot on your retina.
Speaker 3: It is a profound shift in the patient experience. The
Speaker 3: trauma of the intervention is almost entirely removed, and the
Speaker 3: applications extend far beyond the eye.
Speaker 2: Where else are they looking well?
Speaker 3: Doctor Ian Lee, a neurosurgeon from henry Ford Health who
Speaker 3: partnered on this research, he's been heavily involved in exploring
Speaker 3: the neurological applications. Think about brain surgery right now. Accessing
Speaker 3: deep brain regions requires a craniotomy that means shaving the head,
Speaker 3: removing a physical piece of the skull, and navigating surgical
Speaker 3: instruments through delicate vital brain tissue.
Speaker 2: Right It's major life altering surgery just to get to
Speaker 2: the problem. The recovery alone is brutal, but.
Speaker 3: With trimag micro robots, you could potentially deliver treatments to
Speaker 3: those deep brain regions, or you know, dissolve dangerous blood
Speaker 3: clots from a stroke in real.
Speaker 2: Time without cutting the head open yes.
Speaker 3: Or assist in precise tissue oblations without ever opening the skull.
Speaker 3: You track them in real time with MPI, perform the
Speaker 3: intervention using the localized heat and drug release, and dramatically
Speaker 3: shorten the recovery time from months down to days.
Speaker 2: And the gastro intestinal applications are just as wild to
Speaker 2: think about. Imagine just swallowing a simple capsule full of
Speaker 2: these robots that can intelligently navigate your intestines to treat
Speaker 2: inflammatory ball disease locally just a pill, or even using
Speaker 2: them to perform localized microscopic biopsies in the stomach without
Speaker 2: needing to be sedated. So a doctor can force a
Speaker 2: thick endoscopy tube down your throat.
Speaker 3: If we connect this to the bigger picture, what we
Speaker 3: are witnessing is a fundamental historical shift in the medical paradigm.
Speaker 2: How So, for.
Speaker 3: Literally centuries, surgery has been based on the brute force
Speaker 3: concept of cutting the human body open to fix what
Speaker 3: is broken inside.
Speaker 2: Yeah, taking it apart to fix it.
Speaker 3: This technology shifts us away from that entirely. We are
Speaker 3: moving toward working with the body utilizing its own fluid
Speaker 3: pathways from the inside out.
Speaker 2: Okay, I love the vision of the future here. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but this all sounds almost, I don't know, too miraculous,
Speaker 2: which means my skeptical alarm bells are ringing loudly. There
Speaker 2: has to be a catch.
Speaker 3: They're always hurdles, of course.
Speaker 2: Like what happens to the robots when the job is done.
Speaker 2: Let's say you successfully destroy the brain tumor. Now you
Speaker 2: have a fleet of microscopic iron and plastic corkscrews floating
Speaker 2: around in a patient's brain or liver. How do we
Speaker 2: get them out? Do we have to drive them all
Speaker 2: the way back out of the body with the magnets.
Speaker 3: That's a great question. But no, the excess strategy is
Speaker 3: actually one of the most elegant, highly engineered parts of
Speaker 3: the entire design.
Speaker 2: Really, so they stay inside you.
Speaker 3: Do not have to retrieve them. Remember those pigda and
Speaker 3: peda hydrogel polymers we talked about.
Speaker 2: Earlier und stuff.
Speaker 3: They are entirely biocompatible and essentially edible to the human body.
Speaker 3: Wait edible, well, metabolically speaking. Once the therapeutic mission is complete,
Speaker 3: the body's natural metabolic processes simply begin to break down
Speaker 3: the hydrogen network and the iron oxide components. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: they safely biodegrade over time, leaving absolutely no long term residue,
Speaker 3: no heavy metal toxicity, and they don't trigger adverse immune reactions.
Speaker 2: So they do the job and then they just melt
Speaker 2: away into your biology. That is brilliant.
Speaker 3: It's very clean.
Speaker 2: So what does this all mean for the timeline? Because
Speaker 2: I know we aren't picking these up at the local
Speaker 2: pharmacy tomorrow. How close are we to actually seeing this
Speaker 2: in a hospital?
Speaker 3: We are definitely not there tomorrow. The technology is currently
Speaker 3: in the rigorous preclinical stage.
Speaker 2: Okay, still in the lab. Right.
Speaker 3: The core breakthroughs were recently published in the journal Advanced
Speaker 3: Materials in twenty twenty five, and there is a massive
Speaker 3: wave of public, scientific, and institutional momentum building right now
Speaker 3: into March of twenty twenty six. It's moving fast, it
Speaker 3: is teams across MSU ASU and Henry Ford are aggressively
Speaker 3: pushing the boundaries.
Speaker 2: But the core proof of concept is absolutely there. Right.
Speaker 2: The animal models they've utilized are highly promising, Yes, very
Speaker 2: much so. They haven't just done this in a Patriot dish.
Speaker 2: They've successfully navigated these robots through the dense matrices of
Speaker 2: poresigine I fandoms, through actual pig brain tissue, and they've
Speaker 2: even tracked them functioning inside this stomachs of living mice.
Speaker 3: That stomach study was incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they co registered the MPI tracking with traditional CT
Speaker 2: scans to physically prove the submillimeter accuracy. The physics work,
Speaker 2: the biology.
Speaker 3: Works, it absolutely does. The foundational science is entirely sound.
Speaker 3: But this raises an important question about the practical, real
Speaker 3: world hurdles that remain before human trials, like what, Well, first,
Speaker 3: there is manufacturing scaling, the two photon polymerization three D
Speaker 3: printing process. To mass produce millions of perfectly identical, highly
Speaker 3: calibrated microrobots quickly and cheaply is a significant engineering challenge.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, printing one is different from printing a million, exactly.
Speaker 3: Furthermore, human anatomies are incredibly diverse. What works flawlessly in
Speaker 3: a highly controlled, uniform mouse model needs to be absolutely
Speaker 3: fool proof in a human body with wildly varying tissue densities,
Speaker 3: blood pressures, and fluid dynamics.
Speaker 2: Right, everybody's internal plumbing is a little bit different. And
Speaker 2: then there is the massive elephant in the room, which
Speaker 2: the infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Exactly. You can't just hand a doctor a vial of
Speaker 3: micro robots and a standard clinic and say good luck. No,
Speaker 3: Hospitals will need to radically adapt their physical infrastructure. They
Speaker 3: will need to build entirely new specialized surgical suites equipped
Speaker 3: with massive room sized external magnetic manipulation systems and highly
Speaker 3: sensitive MPI scanners just to drive and track these things.
Speaker 2: That's a massive investment, it is.
Speaker 3: And of course, navigating the rigorous multi phase FDA approval
Speaker 3: process for a medical device this novel will require extensive
Speaker 3: long term safety and efficacy trials.
Speaker 2: It is remarkably steep mountain to climb, there is no
Speaker 2: denying that, but the view from the top is genuinely revolutionary.
Speaker 3: I completely agree.
Speaker 2: We are talking about scaling down the entire concept of
Speaker 2: a surgical suite from a massive, sterile room filled with
Speaker 2: exhausted surgeons and sharp metal instruments, down to the size
Speaker 2: of a pill you can hold on the tip of
Speaker 2: your finger.
Speaker 3: Profound.
Speaker 2: It's about democratizing advanced care, making life saving interventions safer,
Speaker 2: vastly faster, and eventually, through the mass scalability of three
Speaker 2: D printing, much cheaper for the average person. It takes
Speaker 2: the visceral terror out of the word surgery.
Speaker 3: It really does. And you know, as we move toward
Speaker 3: this inevitable future of smart, autonomous medical tools, it leaves
Speaker 3: me with a lingering, slightly unnerving thought about the technological
Speaker 3: implications of this shift.
Speaker 2: Oh what kind of thought.
Speaker 3: Well, if we successfully transition to a medical system where
Speaker 3: our deepest internal biology is treated and manipulated entirely by
Speaker 3: external computer controlled magnetic fields, what happens to the cybersecurity
Speaker 3: of the human body?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that is a terrifying pivot.
Speaker 3: Think about it. We already worry about hackers compromising hospital
Speaker 3: databases to steal patient.
Speaker 2: Records, Right, yeah, happens all the time.
Speaker 3: But in a future where trimag robots are standard care,
Speaker 3: a compromised hospital network wouldn't just mean lost data.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: If bad actors gain control of the magnetic actuation systems
Speaker 3: while a patient is in the suite, they are literally
Speaker 3: taking remote control of the physical machines navigating inside your bloodstream.
Speaker 2: That is just terrifying.
Speaker 3: Securing our medical infrastructure is going to have to evolve
Speaker 3: from protecting information to literally protecting our physical biology from
Speaker 3: digital interference.
Speaker 2: That is a deeply fascinating and admittedly chilling question to
Speaker 2: sit with. A future where the most devastating physical diseases
Speaker 2: are cured with microscopic precision, but where our very biology
Speaker 2: becomes intrinsically linked to the security of our computer networks.
Speaker 3: It's a brave new world.
Speaker 2: It is an incredible complex horizon to look toward. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for joining us as we explore the
Speaker 2: microscopic frontier of medicine today. Keep wondering, keep questioning, and
Speaker 2: we'll catch you next time.