Magnetic dragging of vascular obstructions by means of electrostatic and antibody binding

Exploitation of miniature robots and microrobots for endovascular therapeutics is a promising approach; besides chemical strategies (typically systemic), topical mechanical approaches exist for obstruction removal, which however produce harmful debris for blood circulation. Magnetic particles (MPs) are also studied for blood clot targeting. We investigated magnetic dragging of clots/debris by means of both electrostatic and antibody binding. We successfully produced magnetotactic blood clots in vitro and experimentally showed that they can be effectively dragged within a fluidic channel. We also exploited a magnetic force model in order to quantitatively analyze the experimental results, up to obtaining an estimate of the relative efficiency between electrostatic and antibody binding. Our study takes a first step towards more realistic in vivo investigations, in view of integration into microrobotic approaches to vascular obstructions removal.