London: Scientists have developed what they claim are tiny submarines which can be injected into a patient's blood to deliver cancer drugs straight to tumours.
An international team, led by the Tel Aviv University in Israel, has developed the new machines -- 100 times smaller than cancer cells -- which it hopes could be used to treat the patients in just three years' time.
According to the scientists, sending drugs straight to cancer cells means they don't damage other surrounding healthy tissue, and as the materials used to create the machines occur naturally in the body, they are unlikely to be attacked by the patient's immune system.
Tests on laboratory rodents showed that the machines can work successfully and the team is now planning to conduct experiments on humans.
"We have tested this on mice and they were all fine and now we are ready to test it on people. The important thing is we only use things that the body recognises, so its immune
system won't attack them, as they do with other technologies.
"We will probably start with blood cancers because the cells would be floating around and will be easier to find. But cancer is very clever and it will learn to avoid what we are
doing and we will have to keep up -- it is a war we are in," a newspaper quoted team leader Dan Peer.