How Common Foods Help Grow Human Cells (and Why it is Important)

A team of researchers affiliated with the University of Ottawa, in Canada, discovered that common foods offered the perfect structure for mammalian cells to grow, cells needed to help repair damaged tissue and regenerate organs.

“Your students—the ones who are willing to work in a lab like this—are going through the exercise of discovery,” says biophysicist Andrew Pelling whose Lab for Augmented Biology at the University of Ottawa experiments for regenerative medicine. “And when you stumble onto the random discovery that’s actually important, your whole team is trained and ready to execute.”

Upon probing common grocery items, it was discovered that soda bread offers optimal 3D “scaffolds” to support cell growth since it has a microscopic porous structure that allows the shaping of nascent cells into functional tissues. The technique of decellularized fruits and veggies is already showing promise: asparagus scaffolds led to the regeneration of spinal cords in rats, and apple scaffolds in mice to create a human ear.