Techno-Topiary

Wire frames guide the construction of everything from ornamental hedges to colossal skyscrapers. And on a microscopic scale, scientists have developed their own ‘smart’ scaffolds for biological tissue engineering. Cells sprinkled across a 3D mesh of nanowires (coloured brown) use the structure as a stage for growth. Like a high-tech topiary template that knows which parts of the hedge need pruning, the scaffold can sense the cells’ growth. Sensors embedded within the silicon wires provide information about the electrical and chemical conditions deep inside the growing tissue – a step up from the flat growth platforms available previously. The result is a sort of cyborg tissue, sculpted around a man-made scaffold that constantly monitors its development. The scaffold, far from a passive observer, stimulates growth with nano-scale precision. This technology paves the way for an automatic drug delivery system that can specifically target relevant cells and tissues.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Daniel Kohane
• Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School
• Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Nature Materials Copyright 2012
• Published in Nature Materials 11: 986–994