NEW DISCOVERY! SCIENTISTS USE ENGINEERED SPERMBOTS TO GUIDE AND DELIVER CHEMO TO CERVICAL CANCER CELLS

Steemians.... I hope you would have a nice read to day as I reveal to you one of the fascinating and life saving discoveries of 2017. It is my pleasure to have you visiting my page yet again. Welcome.

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As most of us are aware; chemotherapy is the only known means to treat cancer patients. And being a specially formulated poison, it is fashioned to target only cancer cells while sparing the patient's body cells. However, in practice, this does not occur in toto as originally intended because most times chemo doesn't only kill cancer cells but also attacks patient's normal body cells. Owing to this inevitability, there are always unpleasant side effects associated with chemotherapy such as fatigue, nausea and general weakness.

This accounts to the reason patients are not exposed to high doses of chemo in order to mitigate damages done to body cells. Again, this method also exposes chemo to dilution by patient's body fluid and enzymatic action, in which its concentration is further lowered. All these indirectly lead to a more prolonged period of hospital stay.

However, this era of debilitating conventional chemo treatment sets to end as German scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research have been able to come up with a more effective approach in which sperm is infused with chemo and then used to deliver the chemo precisely to cervical cancer cells without harming the normal body cells. Thus easing off the bitter side effects of fatigue and nausea that are associated with conventional chemotherapy. It also ensure that adequate amounts of chemo is used for the treatment.

Led by Haifeng Xu, the team filled sperm cells with common chemo drug doxorubicin and placed them in a dish containing tiny cervical cancer tumors. As published in ACS Nanos, within three days, the sperm had targeted the tumors and killed 87% of the cancer cells. Source.

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notice how the cancer cells are killed off in this image after 3 days of exposure to sperm delivered chemo drug

In a similar experiment involving 4 magnetic harnesses, the team infused sperm cells with chemo and have them carefully placed inside the harnesses. When the set up is banged into a tumor, the reactive force causes the harnesses to loosen its grip, allowing the chemo laden sperm cells to swim towards and into the cancerous cells and discharge its content as it would do if the cancerous cells were to be a female egg.

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Explaining why they are interested in the use of sperm cells as a delivery mechanism, the researchers noted in the publication that...

'...sperm cells are excellent candidates to operate in physiological environment, as they do neither express pathogenic proteins nor proliferate to form u desirable colonies, unlike other cells or microorganisms. Overall, this sperm-hybrid micromotor is a biocompatible platform that can be used in gynecological Healthcare, treating or detecting cancer or other diseases in the female reproductive system in the future. Sperm cells are in fact naturally optimized to efficiently swim in the female reproductive system.' source

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Conclusion

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With many advantages associated with using spermbots as a means to precisely deliver chemo to the spot they are greatly needed without causing much damage to normal body cells, it is obvious without doubt that this is the way to go.

In appreciating why spermbots are the most ideal delivery mechanism, Robby Berman writes on bigthink.com...

To start with, sperm’s ability to fuse with somatic cells protects medications from dilution and breakdown. Also, they can “swim through complex environments” due to their beating tails and membrane biochemistry that make the female reproductive system a comfortable environment. In addition, can last longer in the body since they’re less likely to be in conflict with the patient’s immune system due to proteins and prostasomes on sperm cells’ membranes. Source

Thanks for reading.

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References for further reading

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Ref1, Ref2, and Ref3

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