Google nanobots: Early warning system for cancer, heart disease inside the body Google wants your body to host a search engine, using a pill to diagnose health issues like cancer or heart disease. The nanoparticles inside would travel through the bloodstream and send their findings back to an exterior sensor. The project, run by the company’s secretive Google X research and development division, is still in its infancy, the Associated Press reported. The technology ‒ which would be less than one-thousandth the width of a red blood cell ‒ would use disease-detecting nanoparticles, ingested via a pill, that send data back to a sensor on a wristband. The internet behemoth hopes that the pills will be able to identify minute changes in body chemistry and act as an early warning system for diseases like cancer. Some cancers, such as pancreatic and ovarian, are usually detected only after it is too late for treatments to work, and thus are highly fatal. Dr. Andrew Conrad, the molecular biologist who created a cost-effective HIV test that is widely used in blood-plasma donations, is heading up the latest Google X medical project. What we are trying to do is change medicine from reactive and transactional to proactive and preventative, he told the BBC. Nanoparticles... give you the ability to explore the body at a molecular and cellular level. We want to make it simple and automatic and not invasive, he said to AP. The pills wouldn’t just be able to seek malignant cells. Different sets of nanoparticles would look for different diseases or markers. One set might look for evidence of atherosclerosis ‒ a hardening of blood vessels due to fatty plaques that can lead to a heart attack or stroke. Another could monitor chemicals in the blood, like high levels of potassium, which is linked to kidney disease. Google is trying to create porous, magnetic nanoparticles that would alter the offending cell, protein or chemical and could later be recalled, the BBC reported. Source : RT ( 28.10.2014 )
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 10:47:41 +0000
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