Fifty years to the day after the release of the now-classic film Fantastic Voyage, Christophe Guy, CEO of Polytechnique Montréal, and Professor Sylvain Martel cordially invite media representatives to attend the unveiling of a unique medical interventional infrastructure whose use echoes the gripping expedition by the movie’s scientific team. Although it was pure fiction in 1966, the voyage by “nanorobots” in the human body to directly attack cancerous tumours has become a reality that Polytechnique’s Nanorobotics Laboratory is announcing publicly today. 

The results of 15 years of research by Professor Martel and his team on the administration of therapeutic agents in the colorectal tumours in mice have just been published in the renowned journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Media representatives are invited to the unveiling of the interventional infrastructure on Wednesday, August 24, 2016, at 10 a.m. in Amphithéâtre J-1035 of Polytechnique’s J.-Armand-Bombardier Building with experts from the medical community and representatives of the provincial and federal governments in attendance. A laboratory visit will follow.

The laboratory contains the following equipment:

• a clinical MRI platform to navigate microscopic carriers directly into specific areas in the vascular system and for 3D visualization in the body;
• a specially-developed platform that generates the required magnetic field sequences to guide special bacteria loaded with therapeutic agents into a tumour;
• a large robotic station (consisting of a robotized bed) for moving a patient from one platform to another;
• a hyperthermia platform for temporary opening of the blood-brain barrier;
• a mobile X-ray system;
• a facility to increase the production of these cancer-fighting bacteria.

The event can be followed live on twitter: twitter.com/polymtl

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B-roll and photos of the Laboratory available on request.