Many persistent sinus infections involve biofilms – colonies of bacteria that group together to resist efforts to kill them. Now, researchers have developed biofilm-blasting bots that could handily deal with these, and other, bacterial infections.
While having a swarm of dust-sized microbots inside your sinuses might sound a little horrifying, anyone who’s ever had a persistent sinus infection will tell you that they’d do just about anything to get rid of it. Plus, the robots in question here aren’t miniature terminators that crawl about blasting mucus from the walls of your sinuses with laser rifles. They’re actually single-atom copper-doped bismuth oxyiodide particles that are each about the size of a speck of dust.
In simpler terms, the particles, which were invented by researchers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, contain a mix of the elements bismuth, oxygen and iodine along with the addition of a single atom of copper.
In tests, the particles were delivered via a tube into the sinus cavities of rabbits who had sinus infections. Then, the microbots were steered to the infection site using a magnetic field and X-ray imaging. Once on location, the bots were beamed with light delivered by an optical fiber, which triggered them to get to work. They do this by heating up, which allows them to thin out the thick mucus associated with the biofilm. Then, they penetrate deeper into the biofilm itself and release reactive oxygen species, chemicals that blast the biofilm apart by killing the bacteria in the colony.
The rabbit tests revealed that the bots were effective in driving down the concentration of bacteria in the biofilm from 90% to just 1%. Furthermore, the researchers say that there was no significant damage to healthy mucus or nasal cells, even after 20 minutes of light activation.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
“This microrobot platform not only demonstrates impressive antibacterial capabilities but also presents exciting opportunities for safe and targeted treatment of other deep-seated infections,” said team lead, Zhang Li. “The breakthrough represents a significant milestone in microrobotic therapy, providing a targeted and minimally invasive solution for chronic infection treatment. It paves the way for clinical applications in otolaryngology and beyond.”
Should future testing reveal the techniques effectiveness in human patients, the microbot system could offer an alternative to treating hard-to-fight sinus infections without having to turn to system-wide treatments like antibiotics. The method could also help doctors fight biofilms elsewhere in the body, such as those that can be present in the lungs in the case of cystic fibrosis or in the urinary tract during infections.
The findings have been reported in the journal Science Robotics.
