December 16, 2023 • 11 mins
When you think of robots, you may not necessarily think of them inside your body. A research team at Tufts University teamed up with Harvard researchers to do just that. They've discovered "anthrobots", tiny living robots made from human cells, and they say this could lead to major developments in modern medicine and healthcare. Prof. Michael Levin and Gizem Gumuskaya talk with Nichole about their research, the science and ethics of their discovery, and what they hope to see happen with this new creation.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend where each and
every week we come together we talkabout all the topics important to you and
the place where you live. Itis great to be back with you again
this week. I'm Nicole Davis.I'm not sure how often you think about
robots. They might be your Romanempire, or maybe you're just not thinking
about them that often. But whenyou do, you might not always think
(00:29):
of them doing what they do insideyour body. That's more of like an
alien science fiction thriller situation. However, a team of biologists and scientists at
Tufts University in Medford have recently madean amazing discovery. Personally, you're not
a robot, but they say soonyour cells could actually act like one.
Let's talk about it. Michael Levinis a developmental biologist and a professor at
(00:52):
Tuft's university. Gizem Gumuskaya a PhDstudent there who just graduated. Thank you
both for coming on the show.So you know we're talking about anthrobots,
that's what these are called. Whyis this something we even need to think
about. Well, one of thethings we're very interested in is understanding the
novel capabilities of basic biology. Socells and groups of cells, what can
(01:14):
they actually do? And we getlulled into a certain false sense of security
by watching what they normally do andcells normally build specific organs, specific structures.
But then as engineers we ask whatelse could they do in various environments
and in particular we would like tounlock these capabilities for useful applications. Okay,
(01:34):
so then where did the idea ofcoming up with these anthrobots? I
know that you did some research andcame up with zenobots, So how did
this kind of evolve into this latestdiscovery. Yeah, one of the things
about zenobots is that they're made offrog cells. They're made of embryonic skin
cells, and so you might getthe idea that the ability for these cells
(01:55):
to get together and form is kindof a swimming collective with its facearious behaviors.
You might think that that's that levelof plasticity is something that is basically
associated with being an amphibian or anembryo. You know, those things are
typically quite plastic, and so youmight think that that's kind of a one
off. You know that that's basicallyjust a kind of a frog thing.
In fact, developmental biologists have workedwith something they call an animal cap for
(02:19):
many years, which is a silliatedpiece of embryonic epathelium. And so what
we wanted to do then is toget as far away from from both of
those things as possible, so sofar away from being an embryo, far
away from being an amphibian. Andthey said, okay, let's take adult
human cells and let's see what canbe done. Okay, so gizem tell
me about the process here. Imean, this certainly was a lot of
(02:43):
trial and error. I'm assuming didyou know what you were trying to find
when you started this? Yeah,so we knew that we wanted to make
mamelian versions of the zenobats because wecan't really use DNA bats in you kn't
even hard to think about using yourmedicine because we know right off the bat
that the body will reject that tissuedue to its amphibian origin. So we
(03:07):
wanted to get a little bit closerto the human sort of tissue signature.
We thought about mammals, but thenwe said, why not just trying human
And it's just not as simple astaking the zenobat sort of method. And
just swapping the cells with human cellsbecause zinobat methods starts with embryos, and
(03:32):
obviously human embryos are just not possibleto do that kind of experimentation on them.
So we have to find a humanadult tissue so we can just isolate
itselves from human donors and then pushthose cells into this new synthetic architecture.
So that's where the choice of startingwith human airway pathelium came up. We
(03:58):
also with that brain ventricle and ovidepithelia. From the literature, it appeared
as the longer italium had the mostsort of resources available to us selves or
reagents. So but we wherewell couldhave tried some of the other slated tissues
in the body, and from theprogenitor cells that give rise to their potilia,
(04:20):
so they are sort of pops andlike cells. We were able to
differentiate them into the multicilar steroids asopposed to what they do originally in the
body, which is the mucosle escalatorwhere still is looking inside. What was
the process like then to do thistrial and error? I mean, how
(04:42):
many times did you have to goback to the lab go okay, that
didn't work, and you know,go try again over and over, Like
how long did it take you beforeyou settled and finally found what you were
looking for here? Yeah, ittook me over a year to just try
basically something in different every day.The projects started early in full twenty eighteen,
and I saw the first answerviotle onthe dish twenty nineteen fall, So
(05:08):
yeah, there was definitely It wasn't, as I mentioned, it wasn't even
at the beginning obvious which type ofhumans delated tissue to use. Once we've
made a decision to go with lung, I've tried different lung cell types,
more immortalized one primaries, and oncesettled on primaries, then tried different tissue
(05:29):
culture methods to the suspension three Ddifferentiation. So just really trying to push
that single cell that is normally sortof conditioned to give rise to the human
lung to all these sort of exploringwhat kind of different architectures that it can
create and which one would get meto the target architecture, which is something
(05:50):
that looks like zinobt but made ofhuman cells. Okay, so, Professor
Levin, I mean, did youhave any moral quandaries? I suppose over
whether they should even be done inthe first place. Some people would say,
look, this is essentially new lifefrom human material, even though it's
not technically an embryo. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think we have avery strong moral responsibility to perfect to develop
(06:15):
technologies that are going to reduce thesuffering of human patients and others. This
is compared to all other kinds oftechnologies. This is about as benevolent as
it gets. These are your owncells, the patient's own cells, being
coaxed to do ultimately useful things inthe body. That's you know, there's
no genetic modification, there's no comerizationwith other species, there is no embryonic
(06:39):
tissue. This is figuring out newways that your own cells can be used
to heal your body. And Ithink we have a very strong responsibility to
deal with the incredible amount of medicalsuffering that's out there for just sort of
starting from birth effects and all ofthe things that regenerate medicine deals with,
from from injury to cancer and degenerativedisease. The medical burden is quite quite
(07:04):
astounding out there, and we needthese kinds of solutions. Sure, and
gizam. Then we have these newessentially creations that you've come up with.
What is next for them? Whatare they going to be used in?
What do you hope to see thembeing used for definite? One of the
first step is to try to testthem in more realistic disease models. So
(07:27):
what we have in the paper isa proxy for inurnal tear. I would
love to just move next and somethingto discuss a lot or you know,
where to take this some inutral modelsfor certain nor degenerative diseases, and then
from there looking at perhaps exhibit tissuesextracted from sort of biopsies with humans who
(07:53):
are undergoing certain perhaps surgery as theirdiseases, just basically like tissue that they
would get rid of any way,and then that would help us better understand
how the bots operate within human tissuearchitecture. And then from there there,
I mean, we'll learn a lotthere. Maybe the next steps are could
be some sort of like indieval trials, either with animals or perhaps with humans.
(08:20):
Professor Levin, I mean, howdo you feel about this this big
discovery. Obviously you've been working onit for a few years now, but
this is pretty big stuff. HuhYeah. I'm incredibly hopeful that this is
the beginning of a new kind ofapproach to a number of medical indications,
and also to help us really understandthe plasticity of development, the plasticity of
(08:41):
what normal genomes, in this case, the normal human genome are actually capable
of. I you know, whengizem showed me the first the first little
little bot swimming around, and thatthat video is on the website, I
mean, it's just well, it'sunbelievably cute for one thing, but they
also just just reminds us to behumble about what it is that we think
(09:03):
cells and collections of cells can do. We get we get used to the
genetics sort of driving these these typicalstandard outcomes, and I think we've just
begun scratching the surface of what's actuallypossible. And I think this is this
is the power of different ways ofthinking about things. You know, if
you think about animal caps, whichfor example, frog developmental biologists think about,
(09:24):
uh, that's that's one set ofuses in one set of ways that
you might that you might interact withthese, but in thinking about them from
a bio robotics standpoint, specifically,this idea that these are not just organized
these are actually biobots in the sensethat it's a platform onto which you can
then not only use their native competencies, but to add new functions later.
(09:45):
It's a different way to think aboutthis, and I think that's incredibly powerful
and I look forward to the wholecommunity using them them this is your discovery
here, you know, working obviouslywith Professor Levin, But tell me about
how you feel about this. Thisis going to be a huge deal for
you personally. Yeah, it's definitelya really exciting step. I mean,
I've been working on it for fiveyears. Sometimes I forget that, you
know, throughout those five years,I forget that it's not published yet and
(10:07):
that there is a whole you know, world out there who doesn't know about
this yet. To me, it'sjust very sort of kind of cemented and
became second nature to be working withthem. But yeah, this whole I
think sharing this community helps me takea step back. One thing that's really
exciting to me personally is my uhsort off. I have a background in
(10:30):
architecture, That's where I started out, and I sort of with time,
discovered in early in grad school syntheticbiology and ended up doing aching biology,
and Mike has been very welcoming ofthat sort of designer side of me and
trying to sort of frame nature asa design media, not just the thing
(10:52):
sitting out that you know, figratingto be understood and sort of written.
Books about and answerbots are sort ofone of the first examples for how we
might be able to sort of kindof reprogram by changing their environment, the
default architecture that the nature assumes.So just to create a physical embodiment of
(11:18):
that interest between design and biology hasbeen really satisfying. Have a safe and
healthy and warm weekend. Please joinme again next week for another edition of
the show. I'm Nicole Davis fromWBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
From WBZ News Radio in Boston.This is New England Weekend where each and
every week we come together we talkabout all the topics important to you and
the place where you live. Itis great to be back with you again
this week. I'm Nicole Davis.I'm not sure how often you think about
robots. They might be your Romanempire, or maybe you're just not thinking
about them that often. But whenyou do, you might not always think
(00:29):
of them doing what they do insideyour body. That's more of like an
alien science fiction thriller situation. However, a team of biologists and scientists at
Tufts University in Medford have recently madean amazing discovery. Personally, you're not
a robot, but they say soonyour cells could actually act like one.
Let's talk about it. Michael Levinis a developmental biologist and a professor at
(00:52):
Tuft's university. Gizem Gumuskaya a PhDstudent there who just graduated. Thank you
both for coming on the show.So you know we're talking about anthrobots,
that's what these are called. Whyis this something we even need to think
about. Well, one of thethings we're very interested in is understanding the
novel capabilities of basic biology. Socells and groups of cells, what can
(01:14):
they actually do? And we getlulled into a certain false sense of security
by watching what they normally do andcells normally build specific organs, specific structures.
But then as engineers we ask whatelse could they do in various environments
and in particular we would like tounlock these capabilities for useful applications. Okay,
(01:34):
so then where did the idea ofcoming up with these anthrobots? I
know that you did some research andcame up with zenobots, So how did
this kind of evolve into this latestdiscovery. Yeah, one of the things
about zenobots is that they're made offrog cells. They're made of embryonic skin
cells, and so you might getthe idea that the ability for these cells
(01:55):
to get together and form is kindof a swimming collective with its facearious behaviors.
You might think that that's that levelof plasticity is something that is basically
associated with being an amphibian or anembryo. You know, those things are
typically quite plastic, and so youmight think that that's kind of a one
off. You know that that's basicallyjust a kind of a frog thing.
In fact, developmental biologists have workedwith something they call an animal cap for
(02:19):
many years, which is a silliatedpiece of embryonic epathelium. And so what
we wanted to do then is toget as far away from from both of
those things as possible, so sofar away from being an embryo, far
away from being an amphibian. Andthey said, okay, let's take adult
human cells and let's see what canbe done. Okay, so gizem tell
me about the process here. Imean, this certainly was a lot of
(02:43):
trial and error. I'm assuming didyou know what you were trying to find
when you started this? Yeah,so we knew that we wanted to make
mamelian versions of the zenobats because wecan't really use DNA bats in you kn't
even hard to think about using yourmedicine because we know right off the bat
that the body will reject that tissuedue to its amphibian origin. So we
(03:07):
wanted to get a little bit closerto the human sort of tissue signature.
We thought about mammals, but thenwe said, why not just trying human
And it's just not as simple astaking the zenobat sort of method. And
just swapping the cells with human cellsbecause zinobat methods starts with embryos, and
(03:32):
obviously human embryos are just not possibleto do that kind of experimentation on them.
So we have to find a humanadult tissue so we can just isolate
itselves from human donors and then pushthose cells into this new synthetic architecture.
So that's where the choice of startingwith human airway pathelium came up. We
(03:58):
also with that brain ventricle and ovidepithelia. From the literature, it appeared
as the longer italium had the mostsort of resources available to us selves or
reagents. So but we wherewell couldhave tried some of the other slated tissues
in the body, and from theprogenitor cells that give rise to their potilia,
(04:20):
so they are sort of pops andlike cells. We were able to
differentiate them into the multicilar steroids asopposed to what they do originally in the
body, which is the mucosle escalatorwhere still is looking inside. What was
the process like then to do thistrial and error? I mean, how
(04:42):
many times did you have to goback to the lab go okay, that
didn't work, and you know,go try again over and over, Like
how long did it take you beforeyou settled and finally found what you were
looking for here? Yeah, ittook me over a year to just try
basically something in different every day.The projects started early in full twenty eighteen,
and I saw the first answerviotle onthe dish twenty nineteen fall, So
(05:08):
yeah, there was definitely It wasn't, as I mentioned, it wasn't even
at the beginning obvious which type ofhumans delated tissue to use. Once we've
made a decision to go with lung, I've tried different lung cell types,
more immortalized one primaries, and oncesettled on primaries, then tried different tissue
(05:29):
culture methods to the suspension three Ddifferentiation. So just really trying to push
that single cell that is normally sortof conditioned to give rise to the human
lung to all these sort of exploringwhat kind of different architectures that it can
create and which one would get meto the target architecture, which is something
(05:50):
that looks like zinobt but made ofhuman cells. Okay, so, Professor
Levin, I mean, did youhave any moral quandaries? I suppose over
whether they should even be done inthe first place. Some people would say,
look, this is essentially new lifefrom human material, even though it's
not technically an embryo. I mean, what are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think we have avery strong moral responsibility to perfect to develop
(06:15):
technologies that are going to reduce thesuffering of human patients and others. This
is compared to all other kinds oftechnologies. This is about as benevolent as
it gets. These are your owncells, the patient's own cells, being
coaxed to do ultimately useful things inthe body. That's you know, there's
no genetic modification, there's no comerizationwith other species, there is no embryonic
(06:39):
tissue. This is figuring out newways that your own cells can be used
to heal your body. And Ithink we have a very strong responsibility to
deal with the incredible amount of medicalsuffering that's out there for just sort of
starting from birth effects and all ofthe things that regenerate medicine deals with,
from from injury to cancer and degenerativedisease. The medical burden is quite quite
(07:04):
astounding out there, and we needthese kinds of solutions. Sure, and
gizam. Then we have these newessentially creations that you've come up with.
What is next for them? Whatare they going to be used in?
What do you hope to see thembeing used for definite? One of the
first step is to try to testthem in more realistic disease models. So
(07:27):
what we have in the paper isa proxy for inurnal tear. I would
love to just move next and somethingto discuss a lot or you know,
where to take this some inutral modelsfor certain nor degenerative diseases, and then
from there looking at perhaps exhibit tissuesextracted from sort of biopsies with humans who
(07:53):
are undergoing certain perhaps surgery as theirdiseases, just basically like tissue that they
would get rid of any way,and then that would help us better understand
how the bots operate within human tissuearchitecture. And then from there there,
I mean, we'll learn a lotthere. Maybe the next steps are could
be some sort of like indieval trials, either with animals or perhaps with humans.
(08:20):
Professor Levin, I mean, howdo you feel about this this big
discovery. Obviously you've been working onit for a few years now, but
this is pretty big stuff. HuhYeah. I'm incredibly hopeful that this is
the beginning of a new kind ofapproach to a number of medical indications,
and also to help us really understandthe plasticity of development, the plasticity of
(08:41):
what normal genomes, in this case, the normal human genome are actually capable
of. I you know, whengizem showed me the first the first little
little bot swimming around, and thatthat video is on the website, I
mean, it's just well, it'sunbelievably cute for one thing, but they
also just just reminds us to behumble about what it is that we think
(09:03):
cells and collections of cells can do. We get we get used to the
genetics sort of driving these these typicalstandard outcomes, and I think we've just
begun scratching the surface of what's actuallypossible. And I think this is this
is the power of different ways ofthinking about things. You know, if
you think about animal caps, whichfor example, frog developmental biologists think about,
(09:24):
uh, that's that's one set ofuses in one set of ways that
you might that you might interact withthese, but in thinking about them from
a bio robotics standpoint, specifically,this idea that these are not just organized
these are actually biobots in the sensethat it's a platform onto which you can
then not only use their native competencies, but to add new functions later.
(09:45):
It's a different way to think aboutthis, and I think that's incredibly powerful
and I look forward to the wholecommunity using them them this is your discovery
here, you know, working obviouslywith Professor Levin, But tell me about
how you feel about this. Thisis going to be a huge deal for
you personally. Yeah, it's definitelya really exciting step. I mean,
I've been working on it for fiveyears. Sometimes I forget that, you
know, throughout those five years,I forget that it's not published yet and
(10:07):
that there is a whole you know, world out there who doesn't know about
this yet. To me, it'sjust very sort of kind of cemented and
became second nature to be working withthem. But yeah, this whole I
think sharing this community helps me takea step back. One thing that's really
exciting to me personally is my uhsort off. I have a background in
(10:30):
architecture, That's where I started out, and I sort of with time,
discovered in early in grad school syntheticbiology and ended up doing aching biology,
and Mike has been very welcoming ofthat sort of designer side of me and
trying to sort of frame nature asa design media, not just the thing
(10:52):
sitting out that you know, figratingto be understood and sort of written.
Books about and answerbots are sort ofone of the first examples for how we
might be able to sort of kindof reprogram by changing their environment, the
default architecture that the nature assumes.So just to create a physical embodiment of
(11:18):
that interest between design and biology hasbeen really satisfying. Have a safe and
healthy and warm weekend. Please joinme again next week for another edition of
the show. I'm Nicole Davis fromWBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
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