News, Inspired by Nature: Researchers are borrowing designs from the natural world to advance biomedicine.

When biomedical engineer Jeff Karp has questions, he looks to animals for answers. In 2009, Karp gathered his team at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to brainstorm novel ways to capture circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the bloodstream. They mulled over the latest microfluidic devices. Then the conversation turned to the New England Aquarium, and to jellyfish. Within a year, Karp and his colleagues had designed a microfluidic chip on which 800-micron-wide microchannels are lined with long, tentacle-like strands of DNA that bind a protein on the surface of leukemia cells as they pass through the channels. The jellyfish is far from the only intriguing organism to have served as a blueprint for scientists in the field of bioinspired medicine. Researchers have taken cues from the adhesive chemistry perfected by mussels and marine worms to create tissue glues that stick in wet and turbulent conditions; from red blood cell membranes to help drug-carrying nanoparticles avoid immune attack; and from the slippery slides that help carnivorous pitcher plants catch prey to produce novel antibacterial surfaces. Nature, it seems, provides a compendium of biomedical solutions. Looking to nature is not a new concept, and bioinspiration is just one of several approaches bioengineers employ to devise new medical treatments and devices.

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