ITV Report 19 February 2015 at 5:28am

Microscopic drones which can seek out and repair sections of artery damage could signal the future of treatments for heart disease and strokes, scientists claim.

Successful tests of the nanodrones have been carried out in mice - and researchers hope to conduct the first human trials soon.

The tiny particles are 1,000 times smaller than the tip of a human hair, and are designed to latch on to atherosclerotic plaques - hard deposits made from accumulated fat, cholesterol and calcium that build up on the walls of arteries and are prone to rupture, producing dangerous clots.

Once they have attached, they release a drug derived from a natural protein which can repair damage in the body.

In the mice, scientists found that just five weeks of treatment resulted in significant repairs to artery damage while the plaques were shrunk and stabilised, making it less likely for fragments to break off and cause clots.

Lead researcher Dr Omid Farokhzad, director of the Laboratory of Nanomedicine and Biomaterials at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in the United States, said nanotechnology was a pioneering new area of research and treatment for a variety of conditions.

The inflammation resolving targeted nanoparticles have shown exciting potential not only for the potential treatment of atherosclerosis as described here, but also other therapeutic areas including wound repair, for example.

I'm optimistic that with additional animal validation we will also consider the human testing of the inflammation-resolving targeted nanoparticles for a myriad of unmet medical needs.

These are exciting times in medicine and the future of nanomedicine is incredibly bright.

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Nanotechnology 'could signal the future of medicine', scientists claim