Research Projects

Plant Scaffolds

Growing beef on spinach leaves

Jordan Jones
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, United States
Boston College, United States

cell

scaffold

COMPLETED

Overview

Who: Jordan Jones, Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering

When: 2019 – 2022

Institutes: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, United States; Boston College, United States

Supervisors: Glenn Gaudette, professor and chair of engineering at Boston College; Tanja Dominko, professor of biological science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Summary

What do animal tissue and plant tissue have something in common? Veins. Jordan is taking advantage of this similarity by using leaves as a natural scaffold to grow meat in a lab. He does this first by removing the plant cells from the leaves through a process called decellularization. Once this is complete, the veiny leaf resembles the structure of blood vessels that feed cells within animal tissue. The bovine cells are then free to grow in place of the plant cells.

: MHC stain of primary bovine 🐄🐮 satellite cells on decellularized spinach.

: Jordan in the lab, holding a decellularized spinach leaf on which he will grow beef cells.

: Decellularized iceberg lettuce scaffold for bovine (cow) cells.

Why This Matters

Jordan’s pioneering work using plants allows him to create edible, vascularized scaffolds for growing meat with relatively little effort. This could pave the way for many future innovations in the field of cellular agriculture.

Special thanks to InVivo Foundation for their generous support of Jordan’s research. We rely on philanthropic partners to help projects like this one get off the ground. To learn more about how you can support New Harvest’s research program, please email info@new-harvest.org.

Outcomes

Jordan’s work let to a better understanding of how to use agricultural waste as low-cost and edible scaffold for cultured meat. Take a look at his publications below to learn more about the outcomes of his project!