The (Bio)-Engineering of Proteous: The Fantastic Voyage 2.0 Seminar

Abstract. In 1965, Klement and Bixby wrote the story titled “The Fantastic Voyage” (made movie in 1966) which tells the adventures of an experimental submarine, named the Proteus. This is a normal size submarine shrunk to sub-cellular size, and injected into a human body to navigate all the way to the brain and destroy a brain clot. Shrinking rays are still part of sci-fi stories but our ability to manipulate matter at the nanoscale combined with our understanding of the human body is placing us closer and closer to the design of carriers that can navigate the body with high precision.

In the last year in my laboratory I have put together a collection of expertise that allows me the fast translation of novel nanotechnological discoveries into potentially novel therapies. Herein I will discuss the physics of body navigation (Somanautics) and how we can address the challenges associated with it. I will show our latest results on oncology and neurology and moreover how our holistic approach is resulting in considerable increase of efficient delivery.