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Sensing Strategies for Early Diagnosis of Cancer by Swarm of Nanorobots: An Evidential Paradigm

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Nanorobotics

Abstract

Precancerous states are necessarily characterized by the simultaneous and persistent occurrence of high temperature, high concentration of pyruvic and lactic acids and low pH. These physico-chemical features may thus be viewed as the fingerprint of a growing tumour. A detection strategy based on the use of swarm of nanorobots circulating in the haematic stream is described, together with the basic idea allowing the implementation of the sensing and actuating tools necessary to perform the job.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A robot with overall size on the micrometre length scale, whose constituting devices are on the nanoscale, is referred to as nanorobot.

  2. 2.

    In the case considered here, the energy is chemical in nature, although there are system like the majority of the vegetable kingdom where such an energy is ultimately electromagnetic in character.

  3. 3.

    Hence, the first rule for cancer prevention: Avoid abnormal cell replication by reducing inflammation factors and excessive immune response.

  4. 4.

    Hypoxia leads to resistance to radiotherapy and anticancer chemotherapy, as well as predisposing to increased tumour metastases. However, it can be exploited in cancer treatment. One such strategy is to use drugs that are toxic only under hypoxic conditions, and the first drug of this class to enter clinical testing, tirapazamine, is showing considerable promise [19, 20].

  5. 5.

    Moreover, the character expressing the cell ability to survive in strongly hypoxic conditions can be selected during cancer evolution by the strong competitions among fast-reproducing newly-born malign cells.

  6. 6.

    We shall return later on this analogy.

  7. 7.

    If this model were correct, cancer would be a source of paradoxes, with self-healing due to necrosis, and cancerogenesis due to physiological response!

  8. 8.

    “Gentle” means that the derivatization preserves the redox properties of NAD; in particular, the gentle derivatization should not interfere with Reaction (17.4).

  9. 9.

    In particular, Mandelbrot stresses the point that the seminal Harvey work (published in 1628 [7]) led to a view of the circulation of the blood which asserts that both an artery and a vein are found within a (infinitely) small distance of nearly every point of the body. Stated differently, every point in nonvascular tissue should lie on the boundary between the two blood networks. Considering then that blood is expensive, the volume of all the arteries and veins must be a small percentage of the body volume, leaving the bulk to tissue. These criteria are apparently contradictory since the tissue must be a topologically 2-dimensional shape (it is the common boundary of two 3-dimensional shapes) and it must have a non-null volume. However, the two above requirements are perfectly compatible in fractal analysis. In fact, tissues can be described as fractal surfaces whose topological dimension is 2 and whose fractal dimension is close to 3. Examples of this kind of fractals have been introduced by Osgood in 1903 [39].

  10. 10.

    Since the tree is assumed symmetric, there is only one angle for both branching arteries.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science, University of Milano–Bicocca, via Cozzi 53, 20125, Milano, Italy

    G. F. Cerofolini

  2. Micron, 20041, Agrate Brianza, MI, Italy

    P. Amato

  3. DISCo, University of Milano–Bicocca, 20125, Milano, Italy

    P. Amato

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  1. G. F. Cerofolini
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  2. P. Amato
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Correspondence to P. Amato .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Dept. of Mechanical and Industrial Eng., Northeastern University, Huntington Avenue 360, Boston, 02115, USA

    Constantinos Mavroidis

  2. ENSI Bourges, Institut PRISME, 88 Boulevard Lahitolle, Bourges, 18000, France

    Antoine Ferreira

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Cerofolini, G.F., Amato, P. (2013). Sensing Strategies for Early Diagnosis of Cancer by Swarm of Nanorobots: An Evidential Paradigm. In: Mavroidis, C., Ferreira, A. (eds) Nanorobotics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2119-1_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-2119-1_17

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  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-2119-1

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