Nearly 1.7 million new cases of cancer are detected in the United States each year, and each year cancer claims almost 600,000 lives in the U.S. alone, making it the second-leading cause of death nationally. Treatment is sometimes worse than the illness, as invasive surgeries can be traumatic, and chemotherapy can cause off-target effects that wreak havoc on the entire body. But a new technique described in Nature Biotechnology, which uses nanorobots — literally microscopic robots — to specifically target tumors and cut off their blood supply has the potential to change treatment forever.