Earlier in 2026, Chinese and Hong Kong researchers built CiliaVine with 50 magnetic cilia to control blood flow. Now, the robot captured tumor cells from all 23 liver cancer patients tested, revealing potential for cancer diagnosis

A tiny soft robot covered in hair-like structures has demonstrated how magnetic control can be used to manipulate blood flow and capture rare cancer cells.

Called CiliaVine, the device was developed by researchers from the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Society, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and Chinese PLA General Hospital in China.

The robot is attached to a medical guidewire and has 50 flexible structures known as cilia. Magnetic fields control their movement, allowing researchers to change how fluid moves around the device.


In tests using blood samples from 23 liver cancer patients at Chinese PLA General Hospital, CiliaVine captured circulating tumour cells from all 23 patients, as per an Euronews report.

CiliaVine was designed to change local blood flow

Blood normally moves through vessels in smooth layers. While this makes circulation efficient, it also makes it difficult for drugs, particles or cells to move sideways toward vessel walls. CiliaVine was designed to disturb that flow locally.

Depending on the magnetic field, its cilia can push material toward the vessel wall, draw it away or create small vortices that mix the surrounding fluid.

In laboratory tests, this helped move a model drug toward the vessel wall. The amount reaching the wall was 146% higher than when the drug spread naturally, while 75% more reached a point 1 millimetre beyond the vessel wall.

The robot helped speed up clot breakdown

Researchers also tested whether CiliaVine could improve the action of tissue plasminogen activator, or tPA, a drug used to dissolve blood clots.

In a vessel model treated with tPA, clots dissolved in about 40 minutes when the robot was operating. Without CiliaVine, the process took an average of about 70 minutes.

The result showed that changing fluid movement around a clot could help the clot-busting drug work more quickly in the laboratory model.

Antibodies allowed CiliaVine to capture tumour cells

The researchers then tested the robot's ability to capture circulating tumour cells, which are rare cancer cells released into the bloodstream.

They coated CiliaVine with antibodies and used it on blood samples from 23 liver cancer patients at Chinese PLA General Hospital. Circulating tumour cells were captured in samples from every patient tested.

The team also tested the robot in living rabbits with liver tumours. It was inserted into a major vein through a catheter and operated using magnetic fields for 20 minutes. The examined sections of the vessels showed no reported signs of inflammation or tissue damage.

A possible use in cancer monitoring

The experiments suggest that CiliaVine could eventually help manipulate drugs and cells in specific parts of the bloodstream instead of relying entirely on normal blood flow.

Its ability to capture circulating tumour cells points to a possible role in cancer monitoring. However, the technology has not yet been tested as a treatment or diagnostic tool inside human patients.

For now, the findings come from laboratory vessel models, blood samples from liver cancer patients and experiments in rabbits.

CiliaVine brings together magnetic control, local fluid manipulation, model drug delivery, clot breakdown and tumour-cell capture in a single small device.