Inflammation-Based Localization and Targeted Drug-Delivery in Molecular Communication Networks Based on DNA

One of the big unsolved problems in medicine is targeted drug delivery. Although medications are available for a multitude of illnesses, they typically impact the entire body, resulting in undesired side effects or even drug resistance. In response to this challenge, researchers have suggested medical nanonetworks as a potential future solution. Using that paradigm, nanoscale devices might autonomously detect a disease and treat it on sight given a high enough consensus among the network devices. To achieve this, nanodevices need the capability to precisely determine their location within the human body. DNA-based nanonetworks using proteome fingerprinting are a promising approach to detect both the body region as well as possible biomarkers. Nevertheless, there is a possibility that the devices could drift away from the detection site, resulting in inaccurate drug delivery. In this paper, we introduce a mechanism based on inflammation to mark the detection site, ensuring that medication is released only when suitable nanodevices are in close proximity. We validate the presented approach using the ktHAM module of the NetTAS simulator.