Anthrobots: Tiny Biological Robots Created from Human Cells

Researchers' new therapeutic tools can move, self-assemble, and encourage neuron growth, offering potential for regeneration and disease treatment.

Researchers at Tufts University and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute have created tiny biological robots, called Anthrobots, from human tracheal cells that can move across a surface and have been found to encourage the growth of neurons across a region of damage in a lab dish.
The Anthrobots, ranging in size from the width of a human hair to the point of a sharpened pencil, were made to self-assemble and have a remarkable healing effect on other cells.
The discovery is a starting point for the researchers’ vision to use patient-derived biobots as new therapeutic tools for regeneration, healing, and treatment of disease.
The advantages of using human cells include the ability to construct bots from a patient’s own cells to perform therapeutic work without the risk of triggering an immune response or requiring immunosuppressants.
Anthrobots can only survive in very specific laboratory conditions, and there is no risk of exposure or unintended spread outside the lab. They do not reproduce, and they have no genetic edits, additions, or deletions, so there is no risk of their evolving beyond existing safeguards.