Tiny robots made from human cells heal damaged tissue

https://www.nature.com/articles/d4 [login to see] 7-x?utm_placement=newsletter
Scientists have developed tiny robots made of human cells that are able to repair damaged neural tissue1. The ‘anthrobots’ were made using human tracheal cells and might, in future, be used in personalized medicine.
The research “points the way to a ‘tissue engineering 2.0’ that synthetically controls a range of developmental processes”, says Alex Hughes, a bioengineer at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
Developmental biologist Michael Levin at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and his colleagues had previously developed tiny robots using clumps of embryonic frog cells. But the medical applications of these ‘xenobots’ were limited, because they weren’t derived from human cells and because they had to be manually carved into the desired shape. The researchers have now developed self-assembling anthrobots and are investigating their therapeutic potential using human tissue grown in the laboratory. They published their findings in Advanced Science.