Fusing Biology and Engineering: Manufacturing, Applications, and Future Trends in Bio-Hybrid Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Biohybrid systems are emergent technologies that merge living and non-living materials and can be realized with multiscale designs, ranging from microsized to cm-scale systems. Biointegrated and biointeractive devices can be applied to various biomedical applications (e.g., drug delivery, cell therapies, drug testing, etc.) or nonbiomedical uses (e.g., environmental sensing and exploration).
Incorporating living cells in controllable and intelligent man-made systems requires notable efforts to protect the cells from dysfunction, damage, and death. Nevertheless, biohybrids promise to capture the unique properties of living cells (e.g., self-healing, complex signaling, adaptation, plasticity, efficient energetic economy, etc.) into human-made devices for diverse applications, including biosensing, medical stimulation, imaging, robotics, biomedical models, and others.

Next-generation bio-hybrid systems will feature optimized biochemical and mechanical properties of their synthetic components to maximize cell survival and functionality. Soft materials can improve bio-integration from a mechanical point of view and therefore hold the promise of increasing safety during direct interaction with humans, other species, and delicate systems (e.g., soft bio-hybrid implant technologies and bio-hybrid robotics). Controllable devices composed of soft materials are suitable for structurally combining with living tissue; they elicit interaction with cells or even exploit their functionality. As an example, biohybrid robots combine living cells with flexible inorganic materials to develop adaptive interactions with complex dynamic environments. As such, compliant materials and designs are expected to create coherent physical integration with biological materials for novel biomedical tools (e.g., long-term implantable devices).
Progress in biofabrication techniques will generate organoids and engineered tissues with biomimetic and even patient-specific architectures, addressing the need for more biomedically and clinically relevant models to study tissue physiopathology. The miniaturization and remote controllability of bio-hybrid systems will advance navigation and cargo delivery within complex environments (e.g., bio-hybrid microrobotics) for targeted medical applications. Merging the cell multifunctionality with remote actuation controllability via electricity, magnetism, and optogenetics opens new avenues in soft robotics as applied to healthcare and other fields. This Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers and review articles that focus on the design, manufacturing, and applications of intelligent systems and devices whose operation relies on the functionality of incorporated living cells. Here, we invite contributions about novel engineered systems that borrow living materials from nature and use them for specific tasks. Expected topics include (but are not limited to) processes and products involved in tissue engineering,  biosensors, robotics, bioelectronics, medical devices, and organ-on-a-chip systems that focus on exploiting the unique properties of living cells.

Dr. Miriam Filippi
Guest Editor

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