These tiny robots could be disease-fighting machines inside the body

Call it another case of science fiction becoming scientific fact. Researchers have long dreamed of developing tiny robots that could roam about inside our bodies, delivering drugs with unprecedented precision, and hunting down and destroying cancer cells. Last month scientists from China's National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNT) and Arizona State University said they had developed robots a few hundred nanometers across -- there are 25 million nanometers in an inch -- and when they injected them into the bloodstream of mice, the nanorobots could shrink tumors by blocking their blood supply. The nanorobots were made from sheets of DNA rolled into tubes containing a blood-clotting drug. On the outside, the researchers placed a small DNA molecule that binds with a protein found only in tumors.