{"id":9437,"date":"2024-02-01T09:51:38","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T09:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/?p=9437"},"modified":"2024-02-01T09:51:38","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T09:51:38","slug":"anthrobots-the-future-of-tissue-engineering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/2024\/02\/01\/anthrobots-the-future-of-tissue-engineering\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthrobots &#8211; the future of tissue engineering?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-black-color has-luminous-dusk-gradient-background has-text-color has-background\">I recently came across some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-023-03777-x\">research<\/a> from a team of scientists at Tufts University in Massachusetts, describing their development of &#8216;anthrobots&#8217;. For those like myself, who have never heard of this before, anthrobots are spheres of human tracheal cells that are grown <em>in vitro <\/em>to form spheroids of a few hundred cells each. The cilia on the outside cells allows the anthrobots to &#8220;swim&#8221; in patterns, prompting Levin and his team to consider their potential as therapeutic agents. <\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image is-style-rounded\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.nature.com\/lw767\/magazine-assets\/d41586-023-03777-x\/d41586-023-03777-x_26464308.jpg?as=webp\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Anthrobots are spheroids of human tracheal cells (usually a few hundred each) that can be used to deliver therapy. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-white-background-color has-background\">Levin and his team tested the therapeutic potential of anthrobots to heal a layer of neural tissue that had been damaged by a scratch. They observed that the anthrobots joined together to form a &#8216;superbot&#8217; &#8211; sounds cool, right? What&#8217;s even cooler is that after 3 days of incubating the damaged neural tissue with the &#8216;superbot&#8217;, the tissue was completely healed! This surprised the team as this happened without any genetic modification, just the anthrobot&#8217;s own functionality. As stated by co-author of the study, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-023-03777-x\">Gizem Gumuskaya<\/a>, it was &#8220;not obvious that you&#8217;re going to get that kind of response&#8221;, prompting the team to think of the wider applications.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/media.nature.com\/lw767\/magazine-assets\/d41586-023-03777-x\/d41586-023-03777-x_26464310.gif?as=webp\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Anthrobots come together to form a &#8216;superbot&#8217;, which can then be used therapeutically to repair damaged tissue. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently came across some research from a team of scientists at Tufts University in Massachusetts, describing their development of &#8216;anthrobots&#8217;. For those like myself, who have never heard of this before, anthrobots are spheres of human tracheal cells that are grown in vitro to form spheroids of a few hundred cells each. The cilia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-practice-blogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9520,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9437\/revisions\/9520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/uosm2031-2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}