Self‐Feeding Living Materials Enabled by Cell Responsive Glycogen Nanoparticles as Metabolic Batteries
Melvin Gurian, Niels G. A. Willemen, Isa R. Porsul, Nicole Bassous, Jarno Hiemstra, Yu Na, Debby Gawlitta, Su Ryon Shin, Jeroen Leijten · 2026
Read Self‐Feeding Living Materials Enabled by Cell Responsive Glycogen Nanoparticles as Metabolic Batteries by Melvin Gurian, Niels G. A. Willemen, Isa R. Porsul, Nicole Bassous, Jarno Hiemstra, Yu Na, Debby Gawlitta, Su Ryon Shin, Jeroen Leijten (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13579083.txt.
Description
Melvin Gurian and eight co-authors present living materials that feed themselves in this 2026 paper. Engineered tissues fail at large sizes because oxygen and food cannot diffuse deep enough, so cells inside starve.
The team uses glycogen, the body's storage form of sugar, packed into tiny particles that act like batteries. Human stromal cells kept in the particles survived for weeks with no oxygen and no serum. The cells release enzymes that break the glycogen down. That frees sugar at a pace set by cell density. The team sealed the particles inside small capsules and built them into centimeter scale gels, where cells stayed alive and working for at least a month without oxygen. Implants in animals drew in cells and blood vessels faster.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Melvin Gurian, Niels G. A. Willemen, Isa R. Porsul, Nicole Bassous, Jarno Hiemstra, Yu Na, Debby Gawlitta, Su Ryon Shin, Jeroen Leijten |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 57 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |