Slides available here!

Speaker:

Prof. Sylvain Martel, Polytechnique Montreal, Canada

Title:

Implementing actuation-navigation-sensory capabilities in cancer-fighting nanorobotic agents

Abstract:

The implementation of actuation-navigation-sensory capabilities of medical artificial nanorobotic agents to enhance targeting and the therapeutic efficacy for treating cancer is still far beyond present technological feasibility. Since these functions typically implemented using electronics remains a great challenge at such a scale and within such an environment, we turned to nature to implement such advanced functions. More specifically, it will be shown how tens of millions of MC-1 bacteria can be harnessed simultaneously to mimic swarms of such futuristic artificial nanorobots with an equivalent capability level when operating in a computer-controlled artificial environment enabling the exploitation of their magneto-aerotactic migration behavior.

Bio:

Prof. Sylvain Martel, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering as well as IEEE Fellow, is Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Micro- Nanorobotics and Automation, and Director of the NanoRobotics Laboratory at Polytechnique Montreal, Campus of the University of Montreal, Canada. He received many awards mostly in interdisciplinary research and he is a recipient of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Medical Nanorobotics. He developed several biomedical technologies including platforms for remote surgeries and cardiac mapping systems when at McGill University, and new types of brain implants for decoding neuronal activities in the motor cortex when at MIT. Among other achievements, Dr. Martel's research group is also credited for the first demonstration of the controlled navigation of an untethered object in the blood vessel of a living animal. Presently, Prof. Martel is leading an interdisciplinary team involved in the development of navigable therapeutic agents and interventional platforms for cancer therapy. This research is based on a new paradigm in drug delivery pioneered by Prof. Martel and being known as direct targeting where therapeutics are navigated in the vascular network towards solid tumors using the most direct physiological routes. Such approach leading to a significant increase of the therapeutic index has been featured in several media around the world such as The Globe and Mail, MIT Technology Review, New Scientist, The Economist, BBC, Newsweek, etc.



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