Scientists create heart tissue from spinach leaves

Researchers have found ways to grow perfectly functioning heart tissue on spinach leafs with veins that can transport blood.

Scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Arkansas State University-Jonesboro after an array of trials discovered a technique that can grow beating heart tissue on a spinach leave.

Turns out Popeye’s secret to a full grown set of biceps through a can of spinach could hold some truth behind it. For centuries spinach that is enriched with iron is considered to be good food for heart.

Complex stemming networks of blood vessels that build heart tissue is too complicated for existing 3-D printing of Bioengineering techniques, but the researchers through their countless efforts and series of experiments established a method that can successfully develop heart vessels on a plant leaf.

According to the journal, Biomaterials, that is to be published online in May features, the ways plants and animals use for transporting different fluids, chemicals and other materials.

Regardless of the dissimilarities, the resemblance in vascular network structure in between the leaves and the heart turned out to be quite thriving and the authors were able to build up this technology which "opens the potential for a new branch of science" that examines those very similarities furthermore.

The Scientist used a process called de-cellularization, a process which uses water based cleansing solution that combines with dirt and other impurities to wash the cells off, thus leaving a clean strip of spinach leaf ready for growing a beating heart tissue on it. The leaves at the end are only left with the cellulose framework, which has already been a source product in cartilage and bone engineering.

Further experiment using this technique led the researchers to line the veins of the spinach leaves with the same cells that line human’s blood vessels, which enabled them to send fluids and human blood cells sized micro beads through these newly established veins.

"We have a lot more work to do, but so far this is very promising," said Glenn Gaudette, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at WPI and corresponding author of the paper.

"We weren't sure it would work, but it turned out to be pretty easy and replicable. It's working in many other plants," said the paper's first author, Joshua Gerslak, a graduate student in Gaudette's lab. Gerslak helped design and carry out the experiments while also creating the process of decellularization.

The researchers also were able to remove cells from parsley, sweet wormwood and peanut hairy roots. The scientists are still in search of ways to incorporate these latest discoveries with human studies.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2017