35 pounds and mike got ya impact of thank you out and show you he's brought me to meet beekeeper Ted jansen to get a close-up look it the inspiration behind the science now see here's one Sorenstam what budget aren't you say our something know that I hush the that a little menem'sharpootlian it's not posting her that her 2001 a bee sting may seem like a minor irritation
but actually the venom is extremely toxic to cells immediately when yet another p.m. stops so why would it have been badly to just pack it out because you squeeze ha and squeeze on them always seems me so Sam you're not here to see any kind now we like to be is because they make a toxin toxins Malott music to specifically treat cancers the venom a cancer drug yes be venomous attacks on cancer has been known for quite some time but the problem is how to deliver a mountain is not being used yet to fight cancer because it will destroy any celeb unscented including healthy ones but realizing its potential Sam set out to engineer a nano-scale robot to carry the toxins safely through the body in releasing only when it finds its target not surprisingly he causes invention nano beads each now be has three parts: so what we've got here as model Sam explains with a simple demonstration of how they fit together miss basically is a spear carbon fluorine atoms that forms the carrier for that melham the center banana be is the nanoparticle constructed out of several thousand carbon and fluorine atoms arranged in a spherical hoster less than three hundred nanometers in diameter and then now we have a coating on that which is a fatty kinda accounting and this patty coating allows us you insert the militant toxin internist article here they would be all over this exactly this outer layer holds the deadly be poisoned in place it's like a holster that keeps a gun safe until its strong every tumor cell has a distinct chemical makeup the out earlier banana be is programs to selectively lock onto only those cells that need to be destroyed so of you take this balloon as a cancer cell this nanoparticle will come up next in a cancer cell basically merge with it the coding come off and the militant itself forms a hole in the cancer cell and pops like its namesake banana be in staying only once so swarms of them are required for any treatment Sams lab has decoded the chemical makeup of the the venom so he can manufacture in large quantities for his now be swarms I say goodbye to our beekeeping hosts in order to pay a visit to Sams lab Washington University to see how the Nano bees work in the body so here we are magnetic resonance imaging suite I'm gonna show you what it's like to be a patient as if we were looking for nano these insider and managers say would boost disc is my dignity to wear a sundress and slide into a giant beagle Moscow toast you an MRI uses strong magnetic field in radio waves to detect certain molecules in the body this machine has been tuned to detect chlorine atoms which are part banana be molecules butter otherwise very rare in the body okay having fun in there yet wrong he did play example actually injected Nana bees into me and if I had the cancer that they'd been trained to fight conc it would travel in my bloodstream and stick to any target tissue the encounter images that the technicians see which job right yellow areas where the individual man abuse for finding and killing the disease itself investorpaul there be no toxic side effects as with traditional chemotherapy Sam way week from he's in every day human cancer patients well now this materialize being tested in what's called preclinical stage and we hope that within about a year or so that will have approval to test this in humans
thanks and I appreciate this experiment typically how long would you nation lying in this to guys guys like the nanoscale transistors that came before them nano bees get their power from their tiny size banana bees and other emerging nanotechnologies go even further so this is where militants meet now bees are part of a new breed of small materials itself a sample no need for big complicated machinery to make nano bees put the rating greedy is together in the right conditions and they make themselves this revolution in medicine working at the tiniest have scales would never have been possible without the revolution in electronics that preceded both are transforming our world. and our lives an astonishing speed as we see the power in this new ability to design and build Adam by Adam there may be no more important goal in the sciences materials and mastering the art making stock small but can we make stuff cleaner and greener biodegradable plastics we've gone from this service a new approach to fuel cell cars here it is folks the future American hydrogen storage hold David Pogue investigate new materials on the cutting edge clean things like a scene from Willy Wonka look at for the soybean seat cushions are performing well forty miles an hour making stuff clear next time on over this novel program is available on DVD and Blu ray at shop PBS star torque or call one eight hundred play PBS