Researchers at Stanford have found an unexpected solution to a major challenge in brain science—using a common food additive, xanthan gum, to solve a sticky problem in the lab.
For years, scientists in the Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program have been growing tiny 3D balls of brain-like tissue, known as human neural organoids, in the lab.
These miniature models, created from stem cells, mimic parts of the human brain and are used to study how our brains develop, how disorders like autism and epilepsy arise, and how certain drugs affect brain growth.
But the scientists hit a roadblock. The organoids had a tendency to stick together, forming clumps instead of growing individually.
This made it hard to produce them in large numbers with consistent size and shape—something researchers need if they want to compare results or test hundreds of drugs efficiently.
Dr. Sergiu Pasca, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford and director of the program, remembers when he could only grow a few organoids at a time—he even named them after mythological creatures.
But as the program expanded and new questions emerged, he knew they needed thousands of organoids to understand complex brain diseases and safely test treatments.
The answer came through an unusual collaboration with materials engineer Dr. Sarah Heilshorn. Together, their teams tested 23 safe, low-cost materials to find one that would stop the organoids from sticking.
Surprisingly, xanthan gum—a thickener commonly found in salad dressings and sauces—was the winner. Just a small amount kept the organoids from clumping, and it didn’t interfere with how they developed. That meant researchers could grow large batches without skewing their results.
The impact of this discovery is already being felt. In one major test, the team used xanthan gum to grow 2,400 organoids and exposed each batch to one of 298 FDA-approved drugs.
They found that several of the drugs, including one used for breast cancer, slowed organoid growth—raising concerns about their effects on developing brains. Since it’s often unsafe to test new medications directly on pregnant people or babies, this kind of research can reveal side effects before they happen in the real world.
Pasca and his team are now using the technique to study conditions like autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia. By producing thousands of uniform organoids, they can better understand what goes wrong in the brain and find ways to prevent or treat it. The method is also freely available to other researchers, making it easier for labs around the world to study brain development at a much larger scale.
What started as a sticky problem has now become a breakthrough, thanks to a simple kitchen ingredient. As Pasca puts it, “Unless you scale up, there’s no way to make a dent. That’s the goal right now.”
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