NRI: Design of nanorobotics based on iron-palladium alloy nanohelicses for a new diagnosis and treatment of cancer

Nanohelix被认为是一种新的和有吸引力的构建块元素，用于设计一组新的合成纳米致动器和传感器及其组合，即具有更广泛应用的纳米机器人;生物医学，纳米医学，药物合成的关键催化剂，能源设备（电池，太阳能电池等）的关键电极，以及软物质机器人手的接近触觉传感器。如果纳米螺旋是机械柔性的并且由磁活性材料制成，其在施加的磁场下被控制，则这种磁活性纳米螺旋可以被设计成用于诊断和治疗难治性癌症的新机器人系统。所提出的纳米机器人可以具有多功能;（i）由于“螺旋弹簧”的形状，在磁性引导下游泳，（ii）具有柔性纳米螺旋的纳米机器人在施加的磁场和梯度下的机械振动，因此，由于机械应力加载而杀死癌细胞，以及（iii）用于纳米机器人的磁活性材料也起到磁共振成像增强剂的作用，因此，如果纳米机器人附着在癌细胞部位，则可以通过磁共振成像来识别纳米机器人的准确位置。最近我们采用化学法、氧化铝-二氧化硅模板法和电镀法制备了铁钯合金纳米螺旋。这种铁钯合金纳米螺旋是从我们以前的设计，宏观铁钯合金弹簧，表现出在施加的磁场梯度下的快速振动缩小尺寸。我们发现的与宏观铁钯合金弹簧相关的关键科学机制是一种新的致动机制（混合机制），一组链式反应;施加磁场梯度，磁力，应力从马氏体相诱导马氏体相，导致在很短的时间内快速致动。我们最近进行了分子动力学模拟，以模拟另一种致动器机制的铁钯合金纳米螺旋下施加的“恒定”磁场。我们还合成了另一种由铁钯合金圆柱头（头）和纳米螺旋组成的纳米机器人，其中我们可以用铁头代替铁钯合金头，因此，基于铁头和铁钯合金螺旋组合的纳米机器人可能会更有效地服务于纳米机器人概念。NSF项目的目标是多方面的：（1）通过在磁场下使用纳米机器人来证明假设驱动的机械应力诱导的癌细胞凋亡，（2）建立磁性纳米机器人的最佳导航控制和（3）使用体外实验来证明纳米机器人用于癌症诊断和治疗的有效性。为了实现上述目标，我们提出了在三年时间内完成以下五项任务：任务-A：磁性纳米螺旋及其纳米机器人的高产量加工（Taya）任务-B：铁钯合金纳米螺旋的纳米结构和性质的表征（Taya）任务-C：建模工作（Kuga/Taya）任务D：生产含有细胞凋亡研究溶液的纳米机器人（Takao/Taya）Task-E：在施加的磁场/梯度下进行磁性纳米机器人的体外实验（Lee/Kuga）这一提议的更广泛的影响是，所提出的纳米机器人基于磁性纳米螺旋，从而开辟了上面讨论的新应用。我们计划将这些成果纳入教育，即，现有的研究生课程的积极和传感材料及其集成系统和教育暑期计划在华盛顿大学。这个NSF项目的智力意义是：（i）为纳米机器人的关键构建块元件（即铁-钯纳米螺旋）以及组合的磁头和铁-钯合金纳米螺旋建立高产率处理路线，（ii）研究是否实现了磁性纳米螺旋中的混合驱动机制，（iii）构建用于精确控制纳米机器人导航的内聚模型，（iv）测试机械应力负载诱导细胞死亡的假设和（v）设计为纳米机器人的精确导航定制的亥姆霍兹线圈系统。

Nanohelix is considered a new and attractive building block element for designing a set of new synthetic nano-actuators and -sensors and combination of them, namely nanorobotics which has broader applications; biomedicine, nanomedicine, key catalyst for synthesis of pharmaceutical medicine, key electrodes for energy devices (battery, solar cells, etc), and proximity tactile sensor of soft-matter robotic hands. If the nanohelix is mechanically flexible and made of magnetically active material, which is controlled under applied magnetic field, such magnetically active nanohelix can be designed into a new robotics system for diagnosis and treatment of difficult-to-treat cancers. The proposed nanorobotics can have multi-functions; (i) swimming under magnetic guidance, thanks to the shape of "helical spring", (ii) mechanical vibrations of the nanorobotics with flexible nanohelix under applied magnetic field and gradient, thus, killing cancer cells due to mechanical stress loading, and (iii) magnetically active material for nanorobotics plays also as a magnetic resonance imaging enhancer, thus, accurate locations of the nanorobots if they are attached to cancer cell sites, can be identified by the magnetic resonance imaging. We recently synthesized iron-palladium alloy nanohelices by using chemistry processing route; alumina-silica template and electroplating to make solid-state iron-palladium alloy nanohelices. This iron-palladium alloy nanohelix is down-sizing from our previous design of macro-iron-palladium alloy spring which exhibited the fast vibrations under applied magnetic gradient. The key scientific mechanism associated with the macro-iron-palladium alloy spring, which we discovered is a new actuation mechanism (hybrid mechanism), a set of chain-reactions; applied magnetic gradient, magnetic force, stress induced martensite phase from austensite phase, resulting in fast-actuation within a very short time. We recently made molecular dynamics modelling to simulate another actuator mechanism of iron-palladium alloy nanohelices under applied "constant" magnetic field. We also synthesized another nanorobot which is composed of iron-palladium alloy cylindrical head (head) and nanohelix where we can replace the iron-palladium alloy head by an iron head, thus, the nanorobot based on the combination of iron head and iron-palladium alloy helix may serve more effective nanorobot concept. The goals of the proposed NSF project are multi-fold: (1) to prove the hypothesis driven mechanical stress-induced apoptosis of cancer cells by using the nanorobots under magnetic field, (2) to establish the optimum navigation control of the magnetic nanorobots and (3) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the nanorobots for cancer diagnosis and treatment using in vitro experiment. To achieve the above goals, we propose the following five tasks over a three-year period:Task-A: High-yield processing of magnetic nanohelices and their nanorobots (Taya)Task-B: Characterization of the nanostructure and properties of iron-palladium alloy nanohelices (Taya)Task-C: Modeling work (Kuga/Taya)Task-D: Production of nanorobots containing solution for apoptosis study (Takao/Taya)Task-E: In vitro experiment for magnetic nanorobots under applied magnetic field/gradient (Lee/Kuga)The broader impact of this proposal is that the proposed nanorobots based on magnetic nanohelices, leading to opening up new applications discussed above. We plan to incorporate the results into education,i.e., into the existing graduate course on active and sensing materials and their integrated systems and educational summer program at University of Washington. The intellectual significances of this NSF project are: (i) to establish high-yield processing route for key building block element of nanorobots, i.e. iron-palladium nanohelices, and combined magnetic head and iron-palladium alloy nanohelix , (ii) to study if the hybrid mechanism of actuation in magnetic nanohelix is realized, (iii) to construct a cohesive model for an accurate control of nanorobots navigation, (iv) to test the hypothesis of mechanical stress loading-induced cell death and (v) to design Helmholtz coil system tailored for accurate navigation of nanorobots.