Pencil-tip robots deliver antibiotics directly inside the heart

Engineers at Johns Hopkins University built a pair of magnetic millirobots, each about as wide as a pencil tip, to deliver antibiotics directly to infected heart tissue. A barbed needle module anchors in the tissue as a docking station while a drug module docks magnetically and releases medicine slowly; the procedure could take 10 minutes to an hour instead of four to six weeks of IV therapy.

• The robots target endocarditis, a heart infection affecting up to 50,000 people in the U.S. each year
• A needle module anchors in tissue and a drug module docks magnetically to release repeat doses
• Magnetic fields supply all power, so the robots carry no batteries or motors
• Tests used a gel heart model and pig heart tissue; next are contracting phantom hearts