Oral Presentation ESA-SRB-ANZBMS 2021

Medical Microrobots: A New Paradigm Shift Towards In-Vivo Assisted Fertilization  (#256)

Mariana Media Sanchez 1
  1. Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, Dresden Sachsen, Germany

Novel concepts of untethered microrobots have been developed worldwide to realize non-invasive medical tasks in biological-relevant scenarios. Potential geometries of such tiny robots range from microcages, spheres, to bio-inspired artificial flagella and are designed to transport drugs, cells or molecular reporters to realize targeted therapies. With a similar scope, we have developed different types of biohybrid and bioinspired micromotors, in particular, sperm-hybrid microrobots and microcarriers for fertilized oocytes with the purpose of increasing the pregancy success rate and to reduce the invasiveness of current assisted fertilization technologies. We have successfully demonstrated the guidance and transport of motile and immotile sperm by magnetic microcarriers actuated by weak external magnetic fields, in vitro, employing biological-relevant fluids. These sperm-hybrid microrobots have also been suggested for the first time as potential drug carriers towards gynecological cancer treatment, in which different species of sperm cells from mouse, bull and even human, have been succesfully loaded with anticancer drugs to realize sub-cellular drug delivery. Moreover, we succeeded in the transport and release of multiple viable and mature sperm, employing different carrying strategies, being a crucial step to achieve the egg fertilization in vivo or to control drug dose in the case of cancer therapy. We have also evaluated their perfomance under blood stream as sperm have the ability to swim against flow, and exploited their cargo-delivery ability by functionalizing the carriers with heparin-loaded nanoliposomes. Finally, in order to translate these technologies to pre-clinical trials, we have recently reported the succesful tracking of magnetically-driven micromotors in phantom, ex-vivo and in living mice with high spatial and temporal resolution employing photoacoustic and high frequency ultrasound imaging.