In science fiction (sci-fi), real-world inventions are often pushed a few steps beyond their current iterations, allowing us to explore what the world would look like if technological progress were to continue at pace. But does the creative loop also flow in the other direction? Does science fiction ever become science fact, inspiring the inventions of the future? We have chosen the most important topics found in sci-fi and compared these renditions to real-life innovations developed by Biopôle-based companies.
Genetics
One of the earliest depictions of genetics in sci-fi appears in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, published in 1932: the novel presents citizens who have been genetically engineered to fit into an intelligence-based social hierarchy. Notably, it wasn’t until 1973 that Stanfield Rogers administered the first experimental gene therapy treatment to real-world patients. Although it didn’t generate particularly promising results, a few years later, in 1979, a commission was established to work on the social and ethical questions associated with genetic engineering.
Despite the ongoing debate, advances in genetics led to further real-world applications, including genetically modified animals, bacteria and plants. And shortly after the introduction of genetically engineered food came the first cloned sheep, Dolly, in 1996. The latter in particular led to increased alarm in the public domain, as it was feared that humans would soon be subject to the same experiments. It was in this context that Gattaca was released. This dystopian sci-fi film from 1997 presents a society where children are conceived through genetic selection to ensure they possess the best hereditary traits of their parents. The movie crystallised many of the nuances of the debate around human genetic engineering that was taking place at the end of the 20th century, demonstrating how it could lead to eugenics and genetic discrimination.
Still, the scientific community continued to make progress in the realm of genome editing, as it represented a potent solution for various genetic disorders. The introduction of new tools like CRISPR-Cas9 in 2012 opened up new possibilities by enabling precise genetic modifications. In turn, this led the field of cell and gene therapy to expand rapidly in the following years.
At Biopôle, Tigen and Limula are working to advance cell and gene therapy by making treatment more efficient and cost-effective. Luc Henry, co-founder and CEO of Limula, evoked the importance of keeping an eye on the wider regulatory and market landscape when making progress: ‘Cell and gene therapy is a relatively young field, with the first commercial product getting regulatory approval only five years ago. […] There is new clinical evidence published constantly, both positive and negative, so we need to strike a balance between taking new studies into account while having a stable goal to work towards. […] It’s going to be a collective endeavour across the industry, and we’re doing all we can to play an important part in this revolution.’
Autonomous machines and artificial intelligence (AI)
Even though they are ubiquitous in our modern world, the term ‘robot’ was actually only introduced around a century ago – in 1929 by writer Karel Čapek. Čapek’s sci-fi play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) not only gave robots their modern name but anticipated the contemporary fear that robots would someday replace people, or rise up and kill their human controllers. Ten years later, Isaac Asimov took up the baton, producing a short story collection, I, Robot, which presents some of the most influential concepts in sci-fi, including the Three Laws of Robotics: a robot can’t harm a human or let one come to harm, it must obey human orders unless they conflict with the First Law and it must protect itself unless this conflicts with the First or Second Law.
At the turn of the new century, robots then began to be integrated with ‘human’ characteristics: in 2000, Cynthia Breazeal introduced the first ‘sociable’ robot, designed to analyse, provoke and react to emotions. This precipitated a new wave of scrutiny from the public, which undoubtedly influenced the sceptical attitude depicted in the 2004 film I, Robot. In this story, the main AI server that oversees widely deployed assistive robots comes to the conclusion that humans themselves are the biggest threat to humankind and must therefore be destroyed, creating a perilous race for control. The film raised interesting questions about the limits of robots’ autonomy and Asimov’s three laws, which currently inform real-world regulation around AI and robotics – with some modifications to reflect our 21st century reality.
Despite the bleak vision of robotics in sci-fi, real-world innovation continues, with machines and robots increasingly being integrated with AI to facilitate the performance of complex actions – leading to today’s autonomous vehicles and labs, such as the self-driving lab developed by Biopôle member Atinary Technology.
Various companies in the life sciences are endeavouring to use robotics and AI for good, including several Biopôle companies. Notably, biped.ai has transferred the technology used in autonomous cars to the context of a harness that can support people with visual impairments – which certainly feels like a worthy deployment of this type of technology. Co-founder Maël Fabien described the company’s device as follows: ‘Leveraging the principles of self-driving cars, which use cameras to navigate autonomously, we’ve developed a harness that works in a similar fashion. […] Thanks to a combination of user feedback and technological breakthroughs, I can confidently say we’ve built one of the very best mobility devices in the world to date.’
Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) and implants
BCIs found expression in fiction long before they were introduced in reality. William Gibson’s Neuromancer, published in 1984, introduced one of the first vivid depictions of a BCI: in Gibson’s imagined world, users can project their thoughts into a digital space and enter a virtual reality with enhanced reflexes, memory and vision – long before similar breakthroughs in real-world research on direct brain–machine communication and sensory augmentation.
In fact, it was only in the 2000s to the 2010s that reality began to catch up: BCIs first gained traction as a functional tool (rather than as a way to change users’ perception), especially for people with paralysis. In 2005, a man with tetraplegia was able to control a robot arm through a BCI created as part of the BrainGate project. Then, in 2017, a man who had been paralysed below the shoulders was fitted with a BCI that enabled him to move his arm and hand through direct neural stimulation – turning what once seemed purely speculative into tangible medical technology.
Now, implants have not only exited the brain but also spilled over from medicine into mainstream use: in 2018, thousands of people in Sweden voluntarily had microchips inserted into their hands to unlock doors, make payments or share personal data – bringing the idea of ‘enhanced body’ from sci-fi into everyday convenience. This in turn influenced Biopôle’s Impli, which has developed a smart implant that tracks hormone levels and transmits data directly to doctors to support more effective in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment.
Several Biopôle-based companies are now exploring BCIs and implants that are designed not to alter perception, but to improve health outcomes. Emovo Care is notably developing motorised silicone exoskeletal fingers that go on top of the hand and can be moved by a remote-controlled box. While this is currently envisaged as a purely mechanical tool, CEO Luca Randazzo confessed that he hopes to integrate the product with the nervous system: ‘In the long term, we plan to pair our exoskeleton with electromyographic technique, enabling patients to control movement in their hand through brain activity. These approaches have been shown to have positive results in stimulating brain plasticity and recovery, acting as a closed-loop mechanism that helps reconnect the impaired brain to the body.’
Regenerative medicine (RM)
The idea of instant healing has long been a staple of sci-fi, appearing in series like Star Trek, which ran from the 1960s onward. In the iconic series, futuristic medics wield handheld ‘ray guns’ that can patch up cuts and burns within seconds – conveniently allowing injured characters to return to action immediately.
In the real world, following a conceptualisation phase in the late 1990s, the field of RM began to emerge in the 2000s. Operating at the intersection of engineering and life sciences, it leverages the body’s inherent capacity to heal itself to repair or replace damaged tissues and restore lost function. Early breakthroughs have mainly focused on stem cells – their ability to develop into multiple cell types opened up a range of new therapeutic possibilities, including the production of the first artificial liver in 2006.
Stem cells are certainly not the only possible RM approach, but the complexity (and therefore cost) of production, coupled with stringent regulatory requirements, represent major obstacles in the field. Still, recent research has generated very promising results. For example, Volumina Medical, a Biopôle-based company, is harnessing and orientating the body’s own reparative potential to regenerate soft tissues.
To conclude, while emerging RM technologies are still far from being able to heal a wound in mere minutes, scientists have made massive advances in terms of understanding and mobilising our bodies’ healing capabilities.
A range of companies based at Biopôle are now developing regenerative technologies for real-world use. Vanarix, for example, has developed a cell-based therapy that regenerates knee cartilage to treat arthritis. As founder and CEO Vannary Tieng told us, while the process still isn’t instant, ‘according to feedback from the 20 patients we’ve treated thus far, the recovery trajectory is very positive’. She continued: ‘The patient can walk out of the treatment centre on the day of their procedure and then, between five and six weeks after transplantation, they can return to doing intensive physical activity.’
Synthetic biology and clones
Since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published in 1818, lab-made creatures, clones and synthetic bodies have been a recurrent feature of sci-fi narratives. Michael Bay’s film The Island, released in 2005, develops this theme at length, depicting lab-made clones who have been created purely to be organ donors. The film clearly illustrates several ethical conflicts related to cloning that are still relevant to the field today.
Nonetheless, while synthetic biology and cloning are marked by regulatory and ethical concerns, modern 3D bioprinting technology has started to turn sci-fi’s vision into reality. 3D-printed organs have generated promising long-term results, including for five patients who received 3D-printed ears in 2021 and 2022 and a woman who received a 3D-printed windpipe in 2024.
These developments bring real hope to the field of transplantation, where long waiting lists could become a thing of the past. Scientific research benefits from lab-made organs too. For example, Readily 3D, a company based at Biopôle, is developing a bioprinter that can create living tissue constructs for biomedical research within seconds.
Further scientific innovation has challenged the relevance of creating clones altogether: with the rise of AI and big data in recent years, scientists are now turning to ‘digital twins’ – virtual replicas of patients, which can be used to test how they will react to a given treatment without administering the actual drugs. Digital twins have a range of promising applications, including, but not limited to, clinical trials and personalised medicine – they arguably offer the benefits of cloning without the ethical pitfalls.
At Biopôle, Volv Global leverages AI and population-scale data to improve understanding of complex, difficult-to-diagnose diseases. Volv CEO Christopher Rudolf shared with us some of the benefits and limitations of digital twins, explaining that they can sometimes serve as ‘synthetic control arms’ in clinical trials, providing data for patients who cannot ethically or practically be included in a traditional control group. However, limitations remain: as Christopher explained, rare diseases and heterogeneous populations make it difficult to create accurate virtual replicas for all cases.
All in all, sci-fi builds on the scientific realities of its time to imagine possible futures. In turn, those imagined futures inspire real-world innovators – including entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who have both cited sci-fi as an influence. Rather than leading or following, science and sci-fi engage in a continuous exchange, a cross-pollination that expands our thinking about what is possible and drives innovation forwards.
