Engineered Living Materials: A Therapeutic Paradigm beyond Conventional Biomaterials

Development of biomaterials in the past two decades has profoundly advanced modern medicine. However, the relatively simple and insufficiently biological functions and lack of self-renewal capability limit their ability to dynamically adapt to complex physiological environments. Engineered living materials (eLMs) use living organisms as core functional units and provide a therapeutic approach for addressing these limitations. Thus, this review systematically summarizes the recent advancements in eLMs, beginning with an overview of the primary biological chassis, including bacteria, microalgae, fungi, and mammalian cells. eLMs hold the valuable capabilities of long-term self-sustainment and self-proliferation within complex biological environments, which are endowed with intelligent regulation. For instance, they can sense environmental signals and execute programmed functional outputs, including therapeutic protein secretion or targeted migration. Moreover, they achieve precise control over therapeutic actions, encompassing spatial localization at the disease site, temporal dynamics of the intervention, and quantitative regulation of outputs. Furthermore, we highlight the broad therapeutic applications of these dynamic systems in addressing complex diseases. Finally, we discuss the current translational challenges and future directions of the field, emphasizing the potential of integrating artificial intelligence with synthetic biology and nanomaterial engineering to develop next-generation programmable eLMs and expand their utility across diverse sectors.