Indian scientists have mastered the art of sending a spacecraft to Mars; now, another set of scientists are trying to perfect the technique of sending microscopic voyagers into the brain of a live animal to deliver life-saving drugs.Researchers from the Bangalore-based Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), are working on nano-voyagers, measuring 5 microns in length (one micron is one-millionth of a metre) and one micron in width, to parts of a mouse brain through the blood vessels.The experiment was tested previously in human blood under lab conditions and in other fluids such as water. But this will be the first time that it will be conducted on a live animal.Assistant Professor Ambarish Ghosh from CeNSE said that he and his team will collaborate with Professor Sujit Sikdar to send the nano-voyager into the brain of a live mouse. “We want to try and move the nano-voyager in the brain of a mouse in a controlled fashion and see whether drugs can be effectively delivered,” he said.They will use a deep tissue imager to track the nano-voyagers journey.Ghosh futher explained how they first had to decide what kind of locomotion would be ideal for moving the nano-voyager in the blood.Having studied the movement of spermatozoa and the Escherichia Coli (or E Coli), they chose the latter. He explained that spermatozoa used a filament to crack like a whiplash to move forward while the E Coli used rapid rotation of its head and tail to gain the forward movement, much like a cock-screw. Having achieved that, the scientists then decided to use magnetic force as the propellant for the nano-voyager.The nano-voyager is made of silicon-dioxide which is not magnetic and can easily get corroded by the iron in blood. So the researchers coated the device with zinc ferrites, which also happens to be biocompatible. The scientists are now working on making the nano-voyager faster, the current speed is 15 microns per second.