Without a doubt, the field of medicine is advancing more and more by leaps and bounds. And one of the fields that is resonating louder in hospitals every day is nanotechnology. Now, a group of scientists managed to develop, through a complex chemical process, a group of “cyborg” cells synthetics inside a laboratory.
This semi-organic tissue shares a large number of abilities similar to those of animal cells; Nevertheless, for medical safety reasons, they lack the ability to split.
curious cyborg cells
Their ability to not replicate is quite important, since in this way they can be controlled. The researchers behind this invention believe that these artificial cells might be applied in different fields of medicine; improving cancer treatments, and even cleaning up pollution through specific chemical processes.
“These cyborg cells are programmable, do not divide, maintain essential cellular activities, and gain new non-native abilitiessaid the study’s lead author. Cheemeng Tang of the University of California, Davis.
As reported ScienceAlert, these cells, despite being artificial, are more resistant than normal cells to pH and antibiotic exposure. In the study, these little cyborgs managed to infiltrate the interior of cancer cells, demonstrating the potential that these small biological building blocks might have future applications.