Functional interactions between bottom-up synthetic cells and living matter for biomedical applications

Bottom-up synthetic cells, where diverse non-living materials are combined in creative ways in order to construct increasingly life-like and adaptive systems, are fast approaching a level of function that will enable significant advances in solving specific biomedical challenges. Over the last 10 years, we have seen a wide variety of synthetic cell based approaches to challenges in regulating antimicrobial activity, delivering cargo to mammalian cells, and “growth support”. Despite this progress, there has not been a widespread uptake of synthetic cell technologies in biomedical engineering. In this Review, we highlight both the strengths and limitations of these existing synthetic cell applications, as well as give an overview of the state-of-the-art of synthetic cell technology that has yet been applied to cellular contexts. In doing so we aim to identify opportunities for the advancement of this unique intersection of research fields.