Wasp Venom. Getting stung by a wasp is something that nobody wants, but it turns out that their venom may be able to do more good than harm. Researchers have found that the venom from the Brazilian wasp Polybia paulista has the ability to stop certain cancer cells from growing. There’s a lot of science in the details, but through further testing researchers may be able to start treating certain types of cancer using this wasp venom. Crazy.

Robotic Surgery. Precision is everything when it comes to surgery and we all know that hands can be shaky. So, these robotic surgeons were developed to serve as the stablest hands in the world, removing tumors with incredible precision without a human hand ever coming in contact with the patient. Think doc ock form Spider-Man, but as a surgeon.

Gamma Knife. An advanced radiation treatment for small to medium brain tumors and other neurological conditions. Gamma Knife isn’t a knife at all, but a machine that delivers a single, finely focused, dose of radiation to one point. The machine can target abnormalities less than 3 centimeters or 1 inch in diameter.

Cancer Fighting Nanobots. Robots have come a very long way over the past few years, and now engineers have developed robots the size of a red blood cell. While these nano robots won’t necessarily look like spaceships, they will be able to target specific cancerous cells and attack them with precision. Just imagine walking around with tiny robots inside of you… kinda weird, but kinda awesome.

Tumor Organoids. Researchers have developed a way to grow human tumors outside of the body — in the lab — to speed up testing of drugs. Doctors plan to use the technology to find the most effective treatment for the patient without having to put them through so many tests to find the best ones.

Proton Beam Therapy. Remember hearing about those crazy particle accelerators that scientists were using to create black holes? Well, Proton beam therapy uses similar technology to accelerate protons to insane speeds to shoot them into tumors and then explode. This is the very simplified explanation of how it works, but it’s one of the most accurate forms of radiation therapy for tumors, preventing destruction of healthy tissue from un-targeted radiation. Science!

Adoptive Cell Therapy. Researchers have developed a way to take immune cells from a cancer patient, isolate those that are already armed to fight the cancer or modify others to give them that ability, multiply them, and then inject them back into the body to fight cancer. They’re essentially creating an army of anti-cancer super soldiers.

DNA cages. DNA cages are small strands of DNA used to encapsulate small-molecule drugs and deliver them to the body. DNA cages have many advantages over the current synthetic materials used to deliver drugs, the cages are biodegradable, can be built with precision, their size, shape, and properties can be easily adjusted. This is essentially a super complicated, scientific drug mule.

CIVO. CIVO is a device that allows test drugs to be simultaneously delivered into specific areas within a living tumor. The hand-held device is a microinjection procedure that consists of needles positioned to deliver drugs into up to eight different tissue depths within a tumor. With this, doctors can tell very quickly what treatment will be the best for each individual patient.

CTC Chips Researchers have developed a device that can find a single cell amid 1 billion cells in a teaspoon of blood. Talk about finding a needle in a haystack! But seriously, this could help doctors monitor patient for cancer spread, allowing the patient to be treated sooner. It may also help to improve treatment choices and monitor effectiveness through a blood test.