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Heart Tissue Made of Spinach: Popeye Would Be so Proud

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Have you ever looked closely at a spinach leaf? If so, you probably noticed little "veins" running through it. As it turns out, a group of biomedical engineers also noticed, and a light bulb went off.  

The vascular make-up of the spinach leaf looks a lot like that of a human heart. That gave them a remarkable idea. "What if we used spinach leaves to replicate heart tissue?"  

They checked it out, and believe it or not, it worked!

The process is still in its beginning stages, but at this point, there's every reason to believe people suffering with heart problems might be saved by the humble spinach leaf.  

Researchers at Massachusetts's Worcester Polytechnic Institute are developing a method to use the vascular network in spinach leaves to deliver blood, oxygen and nutrients to grow human tissue.  

Glenn Gaudette and Joshua Gershlak came up with the idea while eating spinach at lunch. The pair of scientists is concerned about the thousands of people who die every year while waiting for a donor organ. Right now, there are about 100,000 people on the waiting list. Far too many won't get theirs in time unless something changes.

Biomedical engineers are trying to bridge the gap by making artificial organs. However, hearts are particularly difficult to construct.   

"One of the big problems in engineering heart muscle is getting blood flow to all of the cells," Gaudette, a professor of biomedical engineering at WPI, told The Washington Post. "Heart muscle is pretty thick."  

The trick is making tissue dense enough to replace a damaged heart, while at the same time delicate enough to allow for tiny blood vessels to deliver oxygen.  

Instead of starting from scratch, the scientists used the basic engineering of the spinach leaf and modified it. 

First, they stripped green spinach leaves of their cells. "We use detergent, soaps, which strips away the cellular material of tissues," said Gershlak, a WPI graduate student in Gaudette's lab. "This leaves behind the protein matrix and structure."  It also takes away the green color, making the leaves translucent.

Next, the scientists seeded the gaps that the plant cells left behind with human heart tissue. After five days, the heart cells began to beat to the delight of the researchers.

"It was definitely a double-take," Gershlak said. "All of a sudden you see cells moving."

The cells continued to beat for an astonishing three weeks. The results of the trial are reported in the journal Biomaterials

Although scientists have a long way to go before doctors place spinach leaves inside the bodies of heart patients, this is the first step. 

"Long term, we're definitely envisioning implanting a graft in damaged heart tissue," Gaudette said.

Once the technique is perfected, the big challenge will be making sure the spinach leaves are not rejected, once inside a host.  Part of ensuring they work is to construct stronger heart-spinach hybrids. 

"If we stack decellularized leaves, can we create a large thickness, more along the thickness of a human heart wall?" Gaudette wondered.

It's certainly food for thought.


 

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