Newsletters

DTN 162: Implantable living materials deliver drugs on demand

Plus: Helium-3 lunar gold rush, Virgin Galactic to begin commercial service, Cowboy files for 20k orbital data centers, non-viral gene therapy, real life gundams, and more.

15 May 2026 — 6 min read

We're throwing a party for a16z’s NYC Tech Week

Join NYC natives HAUS and Stonegardens Advisory on a SoHo rooftop for the second edition of Commercializing Defense Tech, an evening of results-driven conversations about commercializing defense technologies as part of NY Tech Week 2026.

RSVP FOR COMMERCIALIZING DEFENSE TECH v2.0

"If we're going to be making more cars, more robots, more clothes, more food, we're going to need more water. And if we're doing that, we're going to generate more wastewater. If we don't solve this problem, there's going to be a bottleneck."

READ THE FULL INTERVIEW

Implantable 'living materials' that deliver drugs on demand could help fight infections

"To treat an infection, doctors have to find and diagnose it first. But a new approach involving what researchers are calling "living materials" could fundamentally change that. Designed to sit inside your body and activate when needed to help fight infections at the source, the strategy could dispense with the need for pills, shots and even diagnostics.

In a new study published in Science on Thursday, researchers describe successfully implanting a mouse with a "living material" made with genetically engineered bacteria to treat an infection. The technology, if validated in humans, could be used to help prevent infection in surgeries or as a long-term therapeutic that automatically responds to pathogens.

"Living" medicine isn't totally new. Scientists already knew that bacteria can be programmed to sense pathogens and self-destruct when they do so, releasing drugs to kill the invader.

But researchers have been wary about such approaches. "One of the big concerns that everyone has is that we're injecting live bacteria into our body," says Tetsuhiro Harimoto, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. "We don't want them to disseminate and cause infections."

To solve the problem, Harimoto and his colleagues built a "hydrogel," or jellylike, container. It's permeable like a mesh yet stiff enough to contain a live and growing population of bacteria without bursting open and strong enough to withstand some wear and tear."

--Scientific American

The Unitree GD01 in its upright bipedal stance — the robot also drops to four limbs for improved stability on rough terrain. Image: Unitree

“Unitree Robotics has launched the GD01, a rider-carrying robot it describes as the world's first mass-produced manned mech suit, starting at RMB 3.9 million — roughly $537,000. That's a significant correction from the $650,000 figure that circulated at launch; ChinaBizInsider confirmed the actual price alongside details of Unitree's concurrent Shanghai IPO filing. For now, it's a China-only story — no US or UK distributor has been announced.

The machine The GD01 weighs around 500kg with a pilot on board and stands more than twice the height of an average person when fully upright. Its headline trick is transformation: the robot shifts between two-legged and four-legged movement, with the frame also tilting from vertical to horizontal for rough terrain. Bipedal mode mimics a walking gait; quad mode adds stability on uneven ground. Think of it less as a humanoid robot and more as a walking vehicle." (via Gagadget)