Scientists are examining whether they can harness the energy driving human sperm to propel nano-scale robots or deliver medicine to targeted sites in the body.

By deconstructing the stages in the biological pathway sperm cells use to generate their relentless energy, researchers at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine in the United States hope to recreate that process in an artificial device.

Such a device, they say, could be used to help build a delivery system for chemotherapy drugs or antibiotics that would decrease side-effects by allowing medicines to travel directly to the sites where they are needed, and not peripheral areas of the body.

“Our idea is not the final product but rather an energy-delivery system,” said the study’s senior author Alex Travis, Cornell assistant professor of reproductive biology at the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Baker Institute for Animal Health.

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