Magnetic tweezers permit noninvasive surgery

17 Jun 2002

Denis Wirtz switches on his magnetic tweezers, grabs hold of a single DNA molecule and uses a joystick to steer it carefully through a solution. Wirtz, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at The Johns Hopkins University, is not playing an electronic game. He is manipulating molecules in ground-breaking research that could lead to new surgical tools and drug delivery systems.

Using Wirtz's device, a physician may soon magnetically move a microscopic sac filled with cancer-killing medicine through a patient's veins, then empty it directly into diseased cells.

"You could use these magnetic tweezers to transport a vesicle or fluid-filled cell containing a drug," Wirtz explains. "You could use the tweezers as sort of a surgical tool to take it to the targeted area and then penetrate the diseased cells."