Researchers at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland have developed a Star Wars-style “light sabre” that could fight cancer cells.

In fact, the device “which measures only a few milimetres square” is claimed to be capable of targeting and puncturing individual body cells.

“You could think of these as tiny light sabres, like they had in Star Wars, inside your body,” Dr. Gunn-More told Sunday Mail reporter Daniel Martin.

Puncturing cells would allow chemotherapy drugs to enter cancer cells more easily, possibly making chemotherapy more effective with lower doses of the highly toxic compounds commonly used to fight cancer.

Professor Kishan Dholakia from the St. Andrews’ School of Physics and Dr. Frank Gunn-Moore from the School of Biology have successfully mounted the device on an optical fibre, one step closer to adapting it for use in endoscopes, the devices doctors use to insert cameras and other surgical devices into hard-to-reach parts of patients’ bodies, without the need for full-scale exploratory surgery.