Unlike our fleshy human bodies, when trees break a limb, they don’t have casts put on their branches. The vital secret of plant structures lies in the cellulose – the cell walls of the organism – that form the scaffolding to rebuild what’s broken.

Ottawa startup Spiderwort believes it can take these structures found in nature and apply them to the human body with biomaterials that could regrow skin, bones and even spinal tissue – without the fear of rejection.

You’ve probably already heard of one of the firm’s co-founders. Ottawa’s Dr. Andrew Pelling rose to TED fame with his 2016 talk, in which he showed a human ear grown from an apple.

Read the full story at obj.ca.