Scientists from four continents met on February 12, 2020 on the campus of Saarland University for a three-day conference dedicated to a new approach to material synthesis. So-called 'living materials' open up completely new possibilities in medicine, but also in many other areas.
Bacteria have an extremely diverse metabolism that allows them to produce a wide range of substances, from inorganic salts to metal oxides and biopolymers to potent active ingredients. Researchers at the Leibniz Institute for New Materials (INM) in Saarbrücken are currently thinking about using these properties to produce technical and medical materials with novel functions. The aim is to program living organisms such as bacteria or yeasts in a targeted manner and encapsulate them in a carrier material. As active components in the 'living materials' created in this way, they will then perform their pre-programmed task independently. As the organisms themselves remain in the material and are therefore permanently available, sustainable functionality is guaranteed. "In contrast to materials that we synthesize in the laboratory, living materials would have the ability to self-heal, adapt to the environment and even improve their performance during use," explains Professor Aránzazu del Campo, Scientific Director at INM.
Already known applications include self-ventilating sportswear, self-healing concrete walls, self-renewing membranes for biological detoxification, biosensory tattoos to detect harmful substances on the skin or therapeutic use for long-term and personalized delivery of medical agents into the body for chronic diseases.
Many of the unanswered questions were discussed by the 100 participants. For example, how do non-living and living material components interact? Which technologies are possible and necessary? How can the living materials be programmed in a targeted manner and how many functions can be incorporated simultaneously?
The conference was supported by the German Research Foundation and the Leibniz Association's Health Technologies Research Network.
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