The creation of cyborgs – the part human, part machine organisms which are a mainstay of science fiction – took a big step closer to reality this week as scientists from Harvard University announced the successful creation of the world’s first cyborg tissue.
In a paper published in the scientific journal Nature Materials a multi-institutional research team led by Charles M. Lieber, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard, and Daniel Kohane, a Harvard Medical School professor in the Department of Anesthesia at Children’s Hospital Boston, describes how they were able to develop a system for creating nanoscale ‘scaffolds’ which they could then seed with cells which would grow into tissue.
This new system will enable technological devices to effectively ‘communicate’ with living tissue, enabling the two systems – biological and technological – to work together more fully. Electronic devices implanted in the body would then be able to undertake detailed monitoring of the biological environment in which they were placed, allowing them to react accordingly in real time.
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