Ever since Mary Poppins, there is no doubt about it: Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. While children – and demanding adults – today have the luxury of having a variety of medicine, toothpaste and lozenges available in their preferred taste, in most cases the candy industry is at odds with the medical world. Whether it is caries, obesity or diabetes – sweets are not really known for their medicinal power.

That perception may change now that scientists have been able to use the process behind a popular sweet sold at carnivals and amusement parks across the world to create a three-dimensional artificial capillary system. In layman’s terms, all they did was substitute the sugar spun in a cotton candy machine with a polymer – and voila! Never has it been this fun to create an artificial liver or kidney…