A 3D bioprinter can produce over 100,000 organoids daily, and nano-robots are small enough to swim upstream in our blood vessels—these concepts, once confined to science fiction, are now transitioning from the laboratory to reality, quietly reshaping the future of the pharmaceutical industry.
Can you imagine? An organoid that beats like a heart can actually be printed using a bioprinter; a “swarm” composed of millions of nano-robots can navigate through blood vessels, delivering drugs precisely before dissolving.
At the 27th China International High-tech Achievements Fair held in Shenzhen, these revolutionary technologies are moving from the lab to reality, becoming catalysts for drug development and disease treatment.
01 Organoid Printing: “In Vitro Replication” of Human Organs
Under a microscope, an organoid resembling a heart, differentiated from pluripotent stem cells, is rhythmically beating. It not only possesses the ability to beat but also has medical application value for testing drug safety.
Organoids, these miniature organs growing in culture media, are changing the game in drug development.
Professor Xu Tao, director of the Biological Intelligent Manufacturing and Living Printing Center at Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, explains: “With this beating heart organoid, we can test whether the drugs we take daily are safe for the heart. In the future, we will use new technologies similar to organoids to develop human drugs, which is already an important development trend.”
Recently, international scientists have made breakthrough progress in this field. A study published in Materials Today Bio shows that a research team has successfully used gelatin-methacrylate (GelMA) hydrogels for 3D bioprinting to create liver lobule-like organoids.
These organoids not only exhibit low levels of hypoxia but also achieve high levels of albumin secretion (13.47 mg/L) and urea synthesis (5.304 mg/L), demonstrating excellent liver function in vitro.
Even more exciting, researchers introduced vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) into these organoids, successfully constructing vascularized liver lobule organoids (VLH), laying the foundation for the long-term survival of organoids in vivo.
02 Micro-Nano Robots: The “Precision Couriers” Inside the Body
When we fall ill, we usually choose injections or medications, but these methods often cause drugs to spread throughout the body, leading to side effects. With the integration of medical technology and intelligent technology, nano-sized micro-robots are becoming precise “drug couriers” within the body.
At the fair’s booth, a small black object— a magnetic-controlled nano-robot swarm—attracted many eyes.
These robots are composed of nano-units measuring 0.1 micrometers, just 1/1000 the size of a human hair. A robot swarm the size of a fingernail requires over 1 million nano-robot units.
They are controlled by magnetic forces and can execute tasks based on commands.
A study published in Science in November this year demonstrated the immense potential of this technology. Scientists developed a tiny dissolvable robot that can swim in the blood vessels of animal models and be magnetically guided to specific body parts to release drugs.
These gel-based beads contain drugs and magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles, allowing researchers to control their movement through a magnetic field surrounding the patient’s body.
In experiments, the team successfully made the robots roll in blood vessels, moving against a blood flow speed of 40 cm/s, and delivered drugs to designated locations with over 95% accuracy.
Han Long, deputy director of the Shenzhen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, introduced their research achievements: “We have completed an embolization robot, coated with clotting factors, to block blood vessels. Once it reaches the blood vessel, we use a magnetic field to gather it together, and heat can activate its clotting factor effect, allowing it to permanently block the site.”
03 Technological Breakthroughs: Key Challenges from Concept to Reality
Any disruptive technology faces numerous challenges from concept to application, and organoids and micro-nano robots are no exception.
The biggest bottleneck for organoids is the lack of a vascular network. Without blood vessels, nutrients cannot penetrate the core area of the organoid, limiting its size and preventing it from simulating the metabolic functions of real organs.
In June this year, a joint research team from the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Fudan University, and Mofang Precision successfully developed a new organoid culture platform capable of cultivating centimeter-sized tumors or organ-derived organoids.
The team utilized a micro-nano 3D printing system with ultra-high optical precision of 2 micrometers to directly form organoid chips with integrated microvascular networks.
The chip features a hollow tubular structure, with an inner diameter of 80 μm, a wall thickness of 20 μm, and a spacing of 400 μm between adjacent channels. Each channel is uniformly distributed with four groups of slits less than 10 μm wide, periodically arranged along the channel axis at intervals of 300 μm.
This breakthrough allowed the research team to extend the in vitro culture period of lung cancer organoids, endometrial cancer organoids, and kidney organoids to 30 days, while expanding the tissue size to centimeter scale.
For micro-nano robots, the core challenge is how to precisely control a large number of miniature individuals.
Deputy Director Han Long admitted: “Initially, we used physical modeling to derive formulas and solve them. Now, we are also starting to use AI to generate reinforcement learning methods, making the robots smarter and more efficient in generating magnetic field control capabilities.”
According to a report released by the China Report Hall, the current industry competition focus has shifted to the control precision and environmental adaptability of robots.
Advanced micro-nano robot systems are now equipped with modular electromagnetic navigation systems, integrating three strategies: rotating magnetic field drive, magnetic gradient orientation, and intelligent guidance at vascular bifurcations, forming a complete vascular navigation solution.
04 AI-Driven: The “Intelligent Brain” of Drug Development
As organoids and micro-nano robots provide the “body” for the pharmaceutical field, artificial intelligence is becoming the “intelligent brain” accelerating drug discovery.
Dr. Wang Yuan, senior vice president of Crystal Technology, pointed out at a recent forum that AI’s involvement is upgrading drug development from “experience-driven” to “data and intelligence-driven.”
Traditional drug discovery is like fishing for needles in a vast ocean, relying on experience and luck; chemists need to design, synthesize, and test tens of thousands of molecules, which is not only time-consuming but also fraught with uncertainty.
AI is fundamentally changing this situation. Dr. Wang elaborated on how the new pathway operates: using AI molecular generation technology (XMolGen), it can instantly create a vast number of potential molecules in a virtual chemical space, greatly expanding the boundaries of exploration.
Subsequently, through intelligent screening and precise free energy perturbation calculations, the target range can be rapidly narrowed from “astronomical numbers” to hundreds or even dozens of the most promising candidate molecules.
Dr. Wang shared the case of GPX4 inhibitors, where the AI platform started with 10^14 initial virtual molecules and, through layers of intelligent screening, ultimately nominated only 150 compounds for physical synthesis, successfully locking in three promising molecules.
When evaluating the value of AI, people often focus on how much time it saves and how much cost it reduces. However, in Dr. Wang’s view, a more critical metric is the “novelty of compounds.”
AI can help scientists overcome inherent “experience traps” and discover entirely new drug structures.
05 Future Prospects: Paradigm Shift in Drug Development
As these technologies mature, global pharmaceutical research and development is undergoing a paradigm shift.
According to Markets And Markets, the global organ-on-a-chip market is expected to reach $631 million by 2029. The growth of this market is driven by various factors, such as increasing emphasis on non-animal drug testing and the growing adoption of organ-on-a-chip technology by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies for drug discovery and development.
Policy support is also ramping up. In 2021, China’s 14th Five-Year Plan key research and development project listed “key technologies for organoid chips” as a core focus area.
In April this year, new FDA regulations in the United States plan to gradually eliminate traditional animal testing in favor of laboratory-cultured organoids and organ-on-a-chip technologies for drug safety testing.
The global policy shift not only confirms the scientific credibility of chips in simulating human physiological environments but also reveals their foundational role in modern medical research.
In terms of micro-nano robots, scientists have already validated their ability to carry thrombolytics, antibiotics, and anticancer drugs.
Industry analysis shows that medical robots with multi-modal navigation and targeted release functions are becoming the core direction for upgrading specialized equipment in neurology, oncology, and other fields.
At the Shenzhen High-Tech Fair, a patch smaller than one square centimeter, resembling a band-aid, quietly lay in the display case. It is the future’s precise drug “delivery person,” which, once inside the body, can be guided to the site of illness through external magnetic devices for accurate drug delivery.
Nearby, a 3D bioprinter is busy at work, with its “ink” made from functional cells differentiated from pluripotent stem cells, achieving a production efficiency of over 100,000 organoids daily.
These technologies are no longer distant imaginations; they are stepping out of the laboratory and quietly changing the way we face diseases.