Scientists from the University of Ottawa have used bread as scaffolding for the creation of human cells.

Specifically, the team of scientists used Irish soda bread, which includes sodium bicarbonate as a leavening agent in lieu of the traditionally used yeast, to serve as the scaffold for growing living tissues.

Once the Irish soda bread was baked, the team of scientists sterilized it and chemically treated it to reinforce its structure. In the lab, the scientists discovered that human muscle, skin and bone cells sufficiently adhered to the bread and replicated. Additionally, the team determined that the bread was able to maintain its mechanical structure for up to two weeks.

According to the team, the highly porous scaffolding is scalable, offering a potential alternative to synthetic or animal-derived scaffolds and shows promise for both the engineering of biomedical tissue and future foods.

The research appears in the journal BioRxiv.