2024-09-16 07:54:31
Researchers at Tufts University and Harvard University in the United States have created tiny robots from human tracheal cells that can move and stimulate the growth of neurons in a damaged area in a culture dish in the laboratory. They represent a starting point in the development of therapeutic tools for regeneration, healing and the treatment of diseases.
ANTROPOBOTS Y XENOBOTS
These microscopic multicellular robots, called anthropobots because they are derived from humans, were designed to self-assemble and have been shown to have a remarkable healing effect on other cells. Michael Levin of Tufts University led the study, which created anthropobots from adult human cells without any genetic modification. The background to this achievement dates back to the development, in an earlier study, of multicellular biological robots from frog embryo cells, which they called xenobots.
These xenobots were able to navigate hallways, collect material, record information, heal themselves from injury, and even replicate for a few cycles on their own. At the time, researchers were unsure whether these capabilities depended on the nature of amphibian cells, or whether biobots could be built from cells of other species.
HOW DID THEY CREATE THE ANTHROPOBOTS?
The researchers took a single cell from the surface of an adult donor’s trachea, covered in microscopic, mobile hairs that help expel small particles from the airways. By culturing the cells in the lab, they formed tiny multicellular spheres called organoids. They then encouraged them to grow cilia on their surface.
Within a few days, they began to move, propelled by cilia that acted like paddles. They observed that the anthropobots differed in a few categories of shape and movement. They generally survived between 45 and 60 days before biodegrading naturally. Their mobility and small size, between 0.03 mm and 0.5 mm, made them very useful for use in tasks that nanodevices and larger engineering technologies cannot perform.
“Anthrobots self-assemble on the lab plate,” said PhD student Gizem Gumuskaya, who created them. “Unlike xenobots, they don’t require tweezers or scalpels to shape them, and we can use adult cells, even cells from elderly patients, instead of embryonic cells. It’s totally scalable – we can produce swarms of these robots in parallel, which is a good start to developing a therapeutic tool,” she explained.
HEALING “WOUNDS”
The anthropobots moved in different ways over a surface of human neurons grown in a lab dish and stimulated new growth of neurons to fill in the gaps caused by scraping away the layer of neuronal cells and thus heal the “wounds.” “The cell assemblies we build in the lab may have capabilities that go beyond what they do in the body,” Levin explained. “It’s fascinating and completely unexpected that they can do this.” […] can move on their own and stimulate neuronal growth through a damaged region,” he added.
NO RISK
“We are now looking at how the healing mechanism works and asking what else these constructs can do.” Advantages of using human cells include the ability to build robots from a patient’s own cells to perform therapeutic work without the risk of triggering an immune response or requiring immunosuppressants. They only last a few weeks before breaking down, so they can be easily reabsorbed by the body once their work is done.
The scientists stress that outside the body, anthropobots can only survive under very specific laboratory conditions and there is no risk of inadvertent exposure or spread outside the lab. They also argue that since they do not reproduce and have no genetic modifications, additions or deletions, there is no risk of them evolving beyond what they would naturally do. The results were published Thursday in Advanced Science.