🍄Fungus among us

Robot fungi may be coming to a field near you. Aaron Tremper writes for SN about this new generation of biohybrid technology. 

🤖How it works

Anand Mishra, an engineer at Cornell University, has successfully grown mycelia (the thread-like body of a fungus) directly into electrodes attached to two separate robots. The fungi communicate through electrical signals similar to those produced by heart or nerve cells, triggering the biobots to walk and roll around. Flashes of light compel the mycelia to change the robots’ gait and otherwise respond to the environment. 

What’s the application?

Mishra envisions use cases in agriculture, where eventually farming hardware could include biodegradable components that are grown on site. For example, mushroom robots could be deployed to walk through fields, monitoring soil conditions, and decomposing at the end of their lifecycle, or when it’s time to upgrade to replacements.

A few companies and institutions are sowing innovation in electronics used for industrial and urban gardening. 

• CropX is an Israeli company with $30 million in Series C funding that offers a variety of soil sensors. While they don’t yet produce biodegradable sensors, the company’s mission is to reduce water and chemical usage while increasing crop yields, and is committed to more sustainable hardware manufacturing processes and product life cycles.
• Semios raised over $100 million in private equity in 2021. The Vancouver-based company offers a precision farming platform including software and sensor technology. Committed to sustainability, they are actively researching biodegradable materials for use in their sensors. 
• The Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture (IOT4AG) is a multi-institution center backed by the U.S. National Science Foundation. A center research project from the University of Pennsylvania is developing biodegradable, cellulose-based soil moisture sensors.  Designed to be inexpensive and wireless, the sensors offer a sustainable way to monitor soil conditions. The project’s Industry Practitioner Advisory Board members include Bayer, John Deere, and others.  

Squirty flavor gels with potential use cases in VR, shopping

👅Tasty news for your tongue

If you’ve ever wanted to sample a food remotely (say, an intriguing recipe, or a faraway friend’s meal), you may soon be in for a tasty surprise. A new device can mimic flavors for foods and beverages like coffee, cake or lemonade and deliver them to your tongue. Simon Makin writes for SN about the squirty-gel device that debuted just last month.

🧪How it works

“E-Taste” uses five edible chemicals: glucose for sweetness, citric acid for sourness, sodium chloride for saltiness, magnesium chloride for bitterness and glutamate for savory umami. Infused into gels inside a device, the chemicals are mixed in tiny channels and delivered through an electromagnetic pump to your tongue. 

🎮Applications

Developed by materials engineer Yizhen Jia and colleagues, the research is evolving to address known issues. Aroma is a big component of tastiness, so Yizhen is expanding the project’s scope to incorporate smell using gas sensors and machine learning. The team envisions applications in immersive virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality gaming and even sensory rehabilitation for people with COVID-related loss of taste or similar medical conditions.

Simultaneously, a team of researchers at City University of Hong Kong and elsewhere have debuted a similar VR gadget that looks like a lollipop. The device uses iontophoresis, a process that electrically transports flavors across a hydrogel.  When users lick the device, their saliva mixes with food-grade chemicals to produce up to nine flavors: sugar, salt, citric acid, cherry, passion fruit, green tea, milk, durian, and grapefruit. The system also incorporated tiny odor generators.

👃Taste- and scent-makers on the horizon

• Kirin Holdings: A huge Japanese food and beverage, pharma, and biochemical conglomerate, the company made a splash at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show with their Electric Salt Spoon. Already available for purchase in Japan, the device lightly zaps both your tongue and your food with an electrical charge to enhance the salty and umami flavors of low-sodium foods.
• Aryballe Technologies specializes in digital olfaction, using AI-powered “digital noses” to detect and analyze odors. This has applications in food and beverage industries, the automotive industry, and healthcare. The company, headquartered in France, has raised $17 million, most recently through a July 2020 $7 million Series B round. 
• GO Smell is a New York-based pre-seed stage company offering scent cartridges in a holster that attaches to a VR headset for use with gaming, movies, or relaxation. The company hasn’t made public any investment data to date. 

🚬Reduced Nicotine cigarettes

Will removing most of the primary addictive chemical in cigarettes encourage smokers to quit? SN’s Aimee Cunningham writes about a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposal to require tobacco manufacturers to reduce the amount of nicotine in their products.  

🗞️Behind the news

The new rule, proposed earlier this year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, seeks to limit the amount of the addictive chemical nicotine in cigarettes. The next generation of cigarettes would be required to have less than 5 percent of the amount of nicotine that’s generally found in US cigarettes today. The rule would also cap the nicotine in certain other products in which tobacco leaves are burned, including cigarette tobacco, most cigars, and pipe tobacco. Exemptions apply: FDA’s proposal is not applicable to e-cigarettes, nicotine pouches, smokeless tobacco products, and premium cigars.

🩻How it helps

Randomized controlled trials of reduced-nicotine cigarettes report that people using them end up smoking less, even among groups traditionally at higher risk for addiction. Researchers say this could help in smoking cessation among current smokers, prevent millions of young people from starting to smoke, and greatly reduce tobacco-related deaths.

🏪Where to find the new smokes

22nd Century Group, Inc. (NYSE: XXII) is leading innovation in this space, with $190 million in funding for its existing product. “VLN” cigarettes, widely available at U.S. tobacco stores, are FDA-approved products that smoke, taste, and smell like traditional cigarettes but with 95% less nicotine. (Earnings reports released last week for the fourth quarter of 2024 showed revenues down and operating costs up, but the company remains optimistic about its outlook for 2025, with a forthcoming rebrand of its VLN product line.) 

😊Mental health chatbots on speed dial

Missed our earlier call-out to Meghan Rosen and Tina Hesman Saey’s January coverage of AI and the future of health care? Let’s dive deeper into one of the areas they flagged: mental health chatbots.

Healthy mind, healthy market

Among online health care apps, those that specialize in mental wellness are at the forefront of VC investment and corporate adoption. Insurance companies love the benefits: they’re widely accessible, available 24/7 and make people feel more comfortable discussing sensitive information. Users are also inclined to embrace them; as natural language processing improves, chatbots’ conversational abilities seem even more human. Several existing models have improved patients’ mental health in studies. 

🔎Shrinking the scope

There are dozens of mental health chatbots to choose from. (Caveat: these technologies are not regulated by the FDA.) Let’s narrow the field to a few noteworthy examples.

• Cass AI provides real-time text messaging for personalized mental health coaching, combined with community resources, on-demand crisis support, and a network of 5,000 certified counselors across all 50 states.  Based in San Francisco, the company raised a $4.6 million seed round in October of 2022. 
• Woebot Health provides a behavioral health platform combining AI, research, and therapy, along with an engaging (and cute!) virtual agent. This female-founded company has attracted $123 million in funding since 2017, most recently from a venture round led by Bayer’s investment fund. 
• Earkick raised $1 million in 2021 for its real-time mental health tracker. Efforts are focused on marketing to expand its reach nationwide. Founded by serial entrepreneurs with expertise in AI startups and research in the intersection of mental health, they’ve attracted advisors from across the corporate and academic spectrum. 
• Youper is an AI-driven chatbot that offers interactive cognitive behavioral therapy exercises targeting anxiety, productivity, and mood. The San Francisco–based company raised $3 million in its most recent seed round in 2019, and has corporate partners including Nvidia and Intel. 

With a $4 billion mental health app market that’s expected to triple by 2032, we can’t help but reflect on the irony. For some of us, digital addictions drive our anxieties — but it may take an army of therapy bots to bail us out. 

If you or someone you know is facing a suicidal crisis or emotional distress, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

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