Designing Animal-Free Organoids Based on Engineered Vegetables and Protein Crystals [VegFold]

该项目旨在开发下一代基于植物来源材料的组织工程和再生医学的无动物支架。我们提出了一种策略，将植物叶片脱细胞，并将其用作支架，将人类干细胞植入其中。叶子的天然脉管系统与人类的非常相似，它提供了一个有趣的平台来生长可灌注的人类类器官或微组织。然而，纤维素壁本身细胞发生性差，这限制了这种“植物方式”的潜力。我们建议探索一种创新的策略，通过改造植物来产生干细胞粘附在纤维素支架上并开始增殖所需的分子片段，从而提高植物支架（VegFolds）的效率。此外，我们计划整合来自工业合作伙伴Cell Guidance Systems的专利技术PODS，以长期支持支架的成骨分化潜力。

The project aims at developing the next generation of animal-free scaffolds for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine based on material of vegetal origin. We address a strategy where plant leaves are decellularized and used as a scaffold to seed human stem cells in. The natural vasculature of the leaf closely resembles the human one, and it offers an intriguing platform to grow perfusable human organoids or microtissues on. Nevertheless, the cellulose wall is inherently poorly cytogenic and this limits the potential of this "vegetal way".We propose to explore an innovative strategy to increase the efficiency of vegetable scaffolds (VegFolds) by engineering the plants to produce the required molecular moieties for the stem cells to adhere to the cellulose scaffold and start proliferating. Moreover, we plan to integrate PODS, a patented technology from the industrial partner Cell Guidance Systems, to support the osteogenic differentiation potential of the scaffold on a longer term.