This preliminary study was done in mice and showed that the DNA-based bionanorobots could latch onto vascular cells at the tumor site and release a protein (called thrombin) that causes extensive blood clots in the blood vessels of tumors vessels but does not cause clotting elsewhere in the animals. The clots in the tumor vessels induce cell death of the cancer cells.

Much more work is needed to be done before translation to clinical trials and it’s not clear that thrombin will work but the platform of the biodegradable DNA nanorobots seems to work and is the most important finding in this study.