Your office is now under siege from the flu.

One worker down. Then, bang, your buddy in the next cubicle.

How can you combat the seasonal body count? Perhaps, one day, with guided nano rockets small enough to be injected into the body - each carrying a payload of medicine.

Researchers at Radbound University Nijmegen in Holland, say they have made strides in creating smart, self-fuelled delivery pods that could target disease like a missile hones in on an enemy position.

Media in Europe on Tuesday likened it to the shrunken vessel Proteus in the 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage. With miniaturized crew onboard, they try to clear a blood clot in a scientist.

And head researcher Professor Jan van Hest tells QMI Agency that likeness -- minus Raquel Welch and crew -- doesn't make him laugh.

"In fact the comparison is not that far off," wrote van Hest in an e-mail exchange, explaining the nano-system works like a rocket, complete with a motor that can combust fuel.

The gas escapes the nano-rocket only from one side, which results in a thrust that makes the rocket move forward fast -- travelling a distance of more than 100 times its own length in a second.

But van Hest cautioned controlling medicine delivery pods in an actual human is still science fiction.

"We first aim to develop this technology for diagnostics applications outside of the human body," he said

Excerpt from:
Nano-rockets carrying medicine through body closer to reality