Spermbots: potential impact for drug delivery and assisted reproductive technologies

Abstract

Micromotors and nanomotors are an emerging research field that aims at achieving locomotion on the microscale for a variety of applications such as drug delivery, single cell manipulation, microsensors and lab-on-a-chip devices, just to point out a few. The enthusiastic development of hybrid micromotors harnessing biological power sources for physiologically compatible nano/microdevices has recently brought a lot of attention to the international research community that is looking for a solution for the actuation and locomotion on the microscale. This article describes the potential of sperm-driven micro-bio-robots in the biomedical field such as drug delivery or single cell manipulation. Herein, a specific potential of the sperm-driven micro-bio-robot is described that might have impact on the development of assisted reproductive technologies.

Keywords::

• assisted reproduction technology
• drug delivery
• micromotors
• spermatozoa
• spermbot

Acknowledgements

Authors thank the Volkswagen Foundation (# 86 362) and the DFG Priority Programme (SPP 1726). V Magdanz thanks Dr Perez Rodriguez for fruitful discussion.