The cell-free system: A new apparatus for affordable, sensitive, and portable healthcare

The cell-free system is a tool that harnesses the complex biological processes outside of living cells. Owing to the system’s superior flexibility and manipulability, it has matured its technological and scientific potential for more than five decades, with exponential growth in research in the twenty-first century. While the conventional cell-free system has been utilized to understand cellular physiology and protein synthesis by in vitro transcription and translation reaction, in recent years, the cell-free system has evolved into a practical biomanufacturing platform, as well as a substantial research framework for synthetic biology. This comprehensive review covers recent milestones and achievements of the cell-free system as a new apparatus in healthcare, including cell-free biosensing and screening, biomanufacturing of medicine and therapeutics, and system portability.