Not Anytime Soon: The Clinical Translation of Nanorobots and Its Biocompatibility-Interdisciplinarity Critique

Abstract

Medical nanorobots combine the hype, hope and discontents of the wider AI, biorobotics and nanotechnology domains into a single artefact with the single overarching promise of shifting biomedicine and healthcare away from systemic (whole body) therapeutics. Instead, nanorobots are expected to deliver targeted therapeutics by autonomously travelling to hard-to-access target sites within the human body to zap cancerous cells, deliver drugs or genes, make incisions or imaging data, and more. Drawing on an exhaustive review of literature informed by discussions with basic scientists, policymakers, regulators and sociologists, this chapter looks beyond the hype and hope to explore the complexity of technical and non-technical realities of routinising nanorobots into clinical practice though the lens of existing regulatory frameworks for clinical translation. Findings show that inadequate considerations of the biological compatibility (biocompatibility) of nanorobots with human in-vivo environments, in upstream development processes, challenge clinical translatability. This, I argue, is rooted in the overwhelmingly design-driven upstream processes focused on attaining ever-higher levels of bio-intelligence, but mostly at the expense of biological considerations. To a large extent, lack of meaningful integration with multidisciplinary downstream knowledge (e.g., clinical tacit knowledge, regulatory expertise) undoubtedly amplify the design focus. However, it is its underpinnings in weak interdisciplinary engagement throughout the development process, that, I contend, is the overarching critique of the nanorobotics domain’s commitment to translation or its likelihood anytime soon.