Question: do you know how in recent years that antibiotics have no effect on the immune system and now they are making more powerful biotics, would there be a bot or nanobot that can go in your bloodstream or a healing vires that could locate the disease and exterminate it?

Remsha Afzal answered on 7 Nov 2018:

Hi, this is a great question! I’d just like to clarify first that antibiotics are not made to harm our immune system. Rather they affect bacteria that invade our bodies and cause disease. Antibiotics help our immune system by killing bacteria. The bacteria are the ones that then become resistant to the antibiotic (not our immune system) because they evolve just as any other living being, only they evolve quite fast and can be quite tough! In that way we are at a war against the ever-evolving super bugs and so we need newer more powerful antibiotics that scientists are constantly trying to make.

Now for your question about nanoparticles or viruses going into bloodstreams and exterminating the problem: it is certainly being done in the labs all the time!! For example, some viruses (like the AAV virus) can be used for gene therapy, where the virus can travel to the location in the cell with a defective or missing gene that causes a disease and replace it with a healthy, functioning gene. People have also used nanoparticles to carry drugs to target diseases like glioblastoma ( a brain cancer). The future is promising for nanoscience and gene therapy! Maybe you should become one of those scientists in the future and discover ways to make such treatments perfect. 🙂