How Did Scientists Make a Heart from Spinach?

Scientists have discovered a revolutionary way of using spinach to construct a working human heart muscle. The new development could potentially lead the way in resolving long standing issues related to the repair of damaged organs. Read on to see how they did it.

Naturally occurring veins

The scientists at the core of the new technique explained that they were inspired by spinach’s naturally occurring vein system. This became the protagonist for their eventual findings. Although massively different in function to human tissue, the spinach veins displayed a similar pattern to vascular veins found in the human heart.

In a new plant modifying process, a team of scientists stripped plant cells from spinach leaves to create the heart. Next, they directed fluids and microbeads through the spinach's vessels, and completed the process by seeding human cells into it.

A new branch of science

Soon to be published in the journal Biomaterials in May, the authors of the new study claim that, “The development of decellularized plants for scaffolding opens up the potential for a new branch of science that investigates the mimicry between plant and animal."

Eventually, the goal is to help replace damaged tissue in patients who have had heart attacks or serious heart related issues. Akin to blood vessels, the veins in the modified leaves would deliver oxygen to replacement tissue, a process central to producing new heart matter.

Lots of work still to do

“We have a lot more work to do, but so far this is very promising,” claimed Glenn Gaudette, the study's senior researcher and a professor of biomedical engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Massachusetts. "Adapting abundant plants that farmers have been cultivating for thousands of years for use in tissue engineering could solve a host of problems limiting the field."

However, it is still unsure as to whether these spinach scaffolds are going to be safely transferable to human cells, and whether some patients’ immune system may reject tissues grown on plant scaffolds. But this is a positive development in the future of adapting abundant plants to aid heart treatment.

Understanding the red stuff

Our understanding of blood is rapidly expanding, and it’s partly down to methods like capillary isoelectric focusing. First introduced in the 1980s, the technique now has several approaches matching it to different analyses. A closer look at CIEF can be found in the article ‘Capillary Isoelectric Focusing – A Comparison of Different Carrier Ampholytes for Monoclonal Antibody Charge Heterogeneity Analysis’.