Micro scope

Stalwart of Sunday afternoon TV schedules, 'Fantastic Voyage' is a favourite film of many in the engineering community. Some like the ingenious plot, where a miniaturised submarine is injected into an injured diplomat to remove a lethal blood clot. Others like the still-impressive special effects, the sneeringly sinister performance of Donald Pleasance, or Raquel Welch's skin-tight wetsuit. But for some, it is not just a movie; it's a research outline.

'Marvellous film. Very educational,' said Prof Richard Jones, nanotechnologist at the

and the

senior strategic advisor on nanotechnology. 'Not only is it a fantastically potent image of medical nanotechnology, but the job of thinking through why it is not accurate is actually very fruitful.'

Of course, nobody thinks that miniaturising a submarine full of medics and sailors is a practical model for surgery. But medical nanobots have begun to emerge from the realm of science fiction and into fact, as the goals of research projects. The concept of a man-made device, of a similar scale or smaller than the cellular structures in the body, being guided to a specific location to destroy disease tissues, is one that many researchers believe could be a reality.