Biomimicry has been a great source of inspiration for many successful engineering solutions to date. Here, we propose to imitate several natural processes, some of which already occur within the human body, to construct bionanonetworks for targeted cancer drug delivery. In the proposed system, swarm of bioinspired nanomachines utilize the blood distribution network and chemotaxis to carry drug through the vascular system to the cancer site, that is recognized by a high concentration of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF). Our approach is multi-scale and includes processes that occur both within cells and with their neighbors. The proposed bionanonetworks take advantage of several organic processes such as red blood cell plate-like structure for more environmental contact; a berry fruit architecture for the internal multi-foams structure; the penetrable structure of cancer cells, tissue, as well as the porous structure of the capillaries for drug penetration; state of glycocalyx for ligand-receptor adhesion; as well as changes in pH state of blood and O2 release for nanomachine communication. For a more appropriate evaluation, we compare our work with a conventional chemotherapy approach using a mathematical model of cancer under actual experimental parameter settings. Simulation results show the merits of the proposed method in targeted cancer therapy by improving four relevant cancer cells density and VEGF concentration while following more organic and natural processes.
