Opportunities/Vacancies

Swarming Microrobots as Targeted Therapeutics in Confinement  - Position closed to applications

PI: Dr. Samuel Wilson-Whitford

co-PI: Dr. Paul Griffiths

Background

The aggregate cost of Strokes and venous thromboembolism to the UK economy is ~£26 billion per year, with a majority of this cost coming from secondary care and lost productivity. As such, fast, targeted treatment of acute phase ischemia is key to minimising harm directly to the patient and for minimising societal disruption and cost. Current treatments for life threatening thromboembolisms, such as those in the brain, involve highly invasive thrombectomy. Similarly, pharmaceutical treatments such as heparin and warfarin can cause excessive bleeding. Each of these clinical approaches pose an elevated risk in paediatric thromboembolism where the blood vessel structures are too delicate for aggressive treatments, and where the pharmaceutical dosages are prohibitive. As such, there is a need to develop targeted therapeutic systems for accessing and treating blockages in narrow and delicate blood vessels.

In this work, we propose to use magnetically directed swarms of rolling microscale single-component robots, as both abrasives and pharmaceutical delivery platforms for the highly targeted treatment of thromboembolisms in narrow millimeter and micrometer scale blood vessels. A range of microrobots with different characteristics will be produced and the fundamental collective motion of these swarms will be characterised experimentally and supported using computational models. This proposed technology would provide a scalable treatment for accessing the most confined and restricted of blood clots, importantly reducing time, risk and cost in primary and secondary patient care. 

In this project, a combination of synthetic techniques, image analysis and computational models will be used to develop a proof-of-concept for a microrobotic therapeutic, with the aim of addressing 3 key objectives:

• Produce a variety of magnetic microrobotic particles using synthetic colloidal chemistry and surface modification.

• Characterise the collective swarming behaviour of microrobots using image analysis of experimentation, and mathematical modelling.

• Evaluate swarm navigation in model structures produced by 3D printing and subsequently comparing transport to the developed mathematical models.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41327-1

[2] https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.18116