DNA nanobot 'starves' tumors (opens in new tab)

see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24251811

Lots of medical fields are in the stone age. Look at mental disorders, gut disorders (IBS), diabetes, autoimmune disorders, dentistry, ...

Yeah...nucleolin is pretty ubiquitously expressed in most cells. How specific is their aptamer (antibody?) ?

Additionally, this is a similar idea to chemo embolization procedures (something I know is done in the US for some liver metastasis, but is being investigated for other solid tumors), where a catheter delivers a massive dose of chemotherapy at an artery supplying the tumor, and then closes that artery off.

Self-assembly here doesn't imply reproduction.

They compose a two dimensional structure (or more) that, given the proper conditions, build itself in the desired three dimensional shape (1).

(1)- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_origami

Yes, you're right. The self-assembly of the nanorobot is done using the same technique as in the video you linked. In fact, the speaker in the video, Paul Rothemund, is the person who first engineered this self-assembly technique called DNA origami. In his cover article in Nature (2006), where it was first published, you can get a sense of how intricate the folding technique is just by looking at the cover picture of the smiley face he made using DNA (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7082/index.html, the diameter of the smiley face shown here is roughly 100 nm wide).

Not sure which other nano robots you're referring to, but this is more like a custom-built protein that falls apart when it's near specific types of molecules.

No, there is no way to control it externally, nor does it have a mechanism for active movement. The DNA nanorobots move passively along with the blood flow and latches onto the tumors through their apatmer binding sites.