Nanorobotics in Precision Drug Delivery

Abstract

Nanorobotic drug delivery systems represent a convergence of nanotechnology, biomedical engineering, and precision pharmacology, enabling autonomous or remotely guided navigation to pathological targets with spatiotemporal release control inaccessible to conventional drug delivery platforms. This study systematically evaluated four nanorobotic architectures -- DNA origami nanorobots, bacterially propelled micromotors, magnetic nanoparticle assemblies, and lipid-based active nanocarriers -- across three therapeutic applications: targeted tumour drug delivery (doxorubicin payload), thrombosis dissolution (tissue plasminogen activator payload), and antibiofilm therapy in chronic wound infection (ciprofloxacin payload). Using in vitro 3D tumour spheroid models, microfluidic vascular phantoms, and Staphylococcus aureus biofilm reactors, we assessed cargo loading efficiency, controlled release kinetics, targeting precision, and therapeutic efficacy across 240 experimental conditions. Magnetic nanoparticle assemblies guided by external rotating magnetic fields (20 mT, 10 Hz) achieved tumour spheroid penetration depths of 184 +- 22 µm compared to 68 +- 12 µm for passive nanoparticles -- a 2.7-fold improvement -- and delivered 4.8-fold higher intratumoral doxorubicin concentrations. DNA origami nanorobots demonstrated the highest targeting specificity (91.4% selective cargo release in nucleolin-positive cancer cells vs 8.3% in healthy fibroblasts). Bacterially propelled micromotors reduced S. aureus biofilm biomass by 87.4 +- 6.2% in 24 h, exceeding passive ciprofloxacin by 3.4-fold. These findings establish quantitative performance benchmarks for nanorobotic delivery platforms and provide evidence-based criteria for application-specific architecture selection