Embodied Organoids: From Biochips to Swarm Robots

Organoids, as three-dimensional cell cultures possessing certain structural and functional characteristics of organs, have attracted extensive attention and have been widely studied in recent years. Can organoids transcend individual limitations, interact with other types of organoids through engineering approaches, and even have a body constructed for them to enable complex interactions with the environment? After years of exploration, we have constructed universal modular body-on-a-chip (BOC) systems for different types of organoids. Taking the study of the kidney–heart axis as an example, this chip couples human induced pluripotent stem cell (hiPSC)-derived kidney organoids with cardiac organoids via a circulating reservoir, gated by a functionally validated endothelial barrier. By dissecting regulatory circuits that cannot be revealed by single-organ models, the study found that the transcriptional trajectories of organs under stress are intrinsic properties of their coupled state, and identified neural guidance signaling as a candidate pathway in kidney–heart crosstalk. Furthermore, we investigated the embodied intelligence of brain organoids by bidirectionally coupling brain organoid populations with robot swarms, allowing the robots to serve as physical bodies for the brain organoids to perform actions and interact in real experimental environments. By comparing the differences in interactions between healthy and diseased groups, we characterized multiple aspects of electrophysiological phenotypes—including spontaneous electrical activity, stimulus responsiveness, and information-processing capacity—in brain organoids modeling psychiatric disorders. This provides a new research platform for establishing models of psychiatric disorders and for screening and testing related drugs. These two case studies demonstrate that organoids can be integrated with biochips, robots, and other modalities to construct embodied carriers, opening new avenues for exploring drug mechanisms, evaluation and screening.

Dr. Liyu Liu is a Professor and PI at the Human Phenome Institute at Fudan University. He received his Ph.D. from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2008 and subsequently served as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at Princeton University. He previously held roles as a Distinguished Researcher for the Chinese Academy of Sciences "Hundred Talents Program" and Executive Vice Dean of Physics at Chongqing University.

Dr. Liu’s research pioneers "Fused Life" systems, utilizing AI to integrate biological intelligence (such as brain organoids) with mechanical intelligence. His work aims to advance psychiatric disorder characterization, drug screening, and cognitive science. He also holds extensive expertise in organoid biochips and cancer metastasis.

He has led over 10 major national grants (including the National Youth 973 Program) and published over 100 papers in premier journals including PNAS, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters and Lab Chip. He holds 15 authorized patents, multiple of which have achieved successful industrial translation.