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Biomimetics is an interdisciplinary field in which principles from engineering, chemistry and biology are applied to the synthesis of materials, synthetic systems or machines that have functions that mimic biological processes. Biomaterials are any natural or synthetic material that interacts with any part of a biological system. Biomimetic designs could be used in regenerative medicine, tissue engineering and drug delivery.
Microfluidic 3D cell culture platforms may serve as tools for the modelling of human tissues. This Review discusses the design, standardization and automation of such systems for non-clinical drug evaluation and investigation of disease.
Despite the enormous progress in the field of giant lipid vesicles, their use for in vivo biomedical applications is limited. Here, the authors discuss red blood cells as inspiration for enhancing those vesicles, investigating the required cellular features and the corresponding technical hurdles.
The cis-peptide bond is rare in natural proteins and its impact on protein folding is elusive. Here the authors break the conventional understanding that cis-amide-favoring residues destabilize proteins, elucidate the principles of peptoid cis-trans isomerization in collagen folding, and showcase the use of cis-amide-favoring residues in building programmable and functional peptidomimetics.
An article in Science reports an exceptionally warm and thin sweater knitted from stretchy aerogel fibres, whose core–shell structures are inspired by the fur of polar bears.
Cytokine receptor agonists can be designed with longer half-lives in circulation and with enhanced penetration of the blood–brain barrier by genetically grafting macrocyclic peptides into the structural loops of fragment crystallizable regions.
Understanding how natural surfaces repel foulants by wrinkling seems like a simple matter of elasticity. But the nonlinear behaviours that emerge from dimensional effects make for some intriguing new physics.
