Creating Lab-Grown Human Cartilage with Apples!

A research lab at the University of Caen Normandy (France) has succeeded in making cartilage using decellularized apples.

The Bioconnect laboratory at the university, which I head, has just published a scientific paper in the Journal of Biological Engineering. In this original study, we used apples that had been “decellularized” (their cells removed) as a material, combined with human stem cells, to rebuild cartilage outside of the body, in laboratory Petri dishes.

The process is called tissue engineering. Its goal is to rebuild human tissue in the laboratory so it can be used at a later date as grafts to repair damaged parts of the body. The idea is to place a patient’s cells onto a supporting material and grow them in the right conditions so they can form tissues such as bone, muscle, or cartilage.

Many diseases and injuries damage or destroy tissues, which then require reconstruction. Among these are degenerative diseases where tissue slowly wither away over time, such as osteoarthritis (cartilage damage) or osteoporosis (bone loss). There is therefore a real need for tissue grafts.

However, finding healthy tissues for transplant is difficult because donors are rare and compatibility is a major issue. Tissue engineering offers an effective solution to this problem. Using the patient’s own cells when possible also avoids the risk of immune rejection.

Apples provide excellent scaffolding

Although scientists can easily grow cells in the lab, these cells do not naturally organise themselves into full and functional tissues. That is why they need a support material. These materials act like scaffolding, giving cells a structure so they can grow in three dimensions and form real tissue.

One approach is to use human tissues or organs that have been decellularized, leaving only their structure. New healthy cells can then be added. However, this method is limited by the lack of available human tissues. For about ten years now, plant-based tissues have also been decellularized and used as supports.

Several studies (including those conducted in our lab), have already explored different materials. But this work is the first in the world to rebuild cartilage using a plant-based support. The idea came from a Canadian study showing that decellularized apples are compatible with mammalian cells 2. Since cartilage is our specialty, we decided to apply this method.

Plant-based materials offer many advantages: they are widely available, very cheap, already shown to be compatible with living organisms, and easy to shape to match the form of the tissue to be repaired. This study is only a first step. More tests are needed, first in animals and then in humans, to understand how these tissues behave over time and how beneficial they are for patients.

Multiple application possibilities

Potential applications include joint cartilage repair (after injury or osteoarthritis), reconstruction of nasal cartilage (after trauma or cancer), and even ear cartilage. Overall, this research opens new possibilities in tissue engineering, both for reconstructive surgery and for reducing animal experimentation. Indeed, lab-grown tissues can also be used to better model disease and test treatments in so-called organoid models, which can reduce or even replace animal testing.

Finally, because plants are incredibly diverse, there is still a wealth of potential to explore. Future research will aim to identify which plants, or which parts of plants, are best suited for rebuilding specific human tissues. Other plants, such as celery, are already being studied.

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