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Team:UCSF/Background
From 2009.igem.org
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Our team is inspired by the use of robots which perform tasks that would otherwise be difficult to accomplish. For example, the Mars rovers allow us to make observations and conduct physical experiments in harsh, remote locations otherwise inaccessible to humans. In many ways, the human body represents unexplored territory of a different scale. For example, we may understand many aspects of human disease. However, certain markers of disease are extremely difficult to detect (e.g., primary tumors) and treatment of disease can be hampered by the impracticality of performing invasive surgeries.
The "holy grail" of nanomedicine would be to develop microscopic robots that could travel anywhere in the body and perform complex, user-defined tasks. Such devices would have several key advantages over traditional, small-molecule therapies:
machines exist in nature. neutrophils, crawl through tissue, etc.
