Artificial cells are micro-vesicles that are artificially engineered to possess some structures and functions, similar to biological cells. There are two approaches for fabricating artificial cells. The top-down approach mainly makes a kit in biological methods to redesign and modify biological gene sequences to create artificial cells, and the bottom-up approach mainly adopts chemical methods to prepare protocell models from non-living matter. Here we review in detail towards the different chemically constructed artificial cells, including lipid vesicles, proteosomes, polymersomes, coacervate droplets and colloidosomes. Taken together, this minireview unravels an update on recent efforts in biomedical applications of artificial cells over a broad range of analytical sensing, cell structure and function simulation, biological cargo delivery, micro-nano reactors, and disease diagnosis and treatment.