{"id":167428,"date":"2023-07-13T10:26:32","date_gmt":"2023-07-13T15:26:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/jean-pierre-sauvage-nobel-laureate-in-chemistry-work-is-being-done-on-machines-that-will-travel-through-the-blood-to-kill-cancer"},"modified":"2023-07-13T10:26:32","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T15:26:32","slug":"jean-pierre-sauvage-nobel-laureate-in-chemistry-work-is-being-done-on-machines-that-will-travel-through-the-blood-to-kill-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/jean-pierre-sauvage-nobel-laureate-in-chemistry-work-is-being-done-on-machines-that-will-travel-through-the-blood-to-kill-cancer","title":{"rendered":"Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry: \u2018Work is being done on machines that will travel through the blood to kill cancer\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/jean-pierre-sauvage-nobel-laureate-in-chemistry-work-is-being-done-on-machines-that-will-travel-through-the-blood-to-kill-cancer2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Last year, the chemist \u2013 who is an emeritus professor at the University of Strasbourg \u2013 published a book titled <i>The Elegance of Molecules.<\/i> In the pages, he lets his imagination run wild. \u201cOver time, most of the chemical reactions that govern nature could be controlled or imitated by a nanorobot: counter-offensives by the immune system, the production of antibodies, hormones on demand, the repairing of damaged cells and organs [or] the correction of anomalies in the genetic text,\u201d Sauvage writes. \u201cNone of this will belong in the realm of science fiction in the long-term.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sitting in the hotel\u2019s restaurant, however, the researcher\u2019s realism contrasts with his futuristic fantasy. \u201cToday, we can\u2019t do much. Molecular machines are a somewhat new concept: we can make molecules that move as we choose [and] we can make a fairly complex molecule perform a rotary motion. Or we can make it behave like a muscle, stretching and contracting. The applications will arrive in the future, but we\u2019re not there yet,\u201d he stresses.<\/p>\n<p>The French researcher has been developing these molecular muscles since 2002 alongside a Spanish chemist \u2013 Mar\u00eda Consuelo Jim\u00e9nez \u2013 from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. \u201cThe first thing was to show that we can make a molecule that contracts and stretches. Now, you can think of making materials \u2013 especially fibers \u2013 that can contract and stretch. Perhaps artificial muscles could be made to replace damaged muscles in people, but that will be in the future. At the moment, there are no real applications,\u201d Sauvage clarifies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year, the chemist \u2013 who is an emeritus professor at the University of Strasbourg \u2013 published a book titled The Elegance of Molecules. In the pages, he lets his imagination run wild. \u201cOver time, most of the chemical reactions that govern nature could be controlled or imitated by a nanorobot: counter-offensives by the immune [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,1499,412,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-cyborgs","category-genetics","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}