Growing Heart Tissue on Leaves... What?

Scientists can grow human tissues, bones and even whole organs. A problem with tissue regeneration is in establishing a vascular system to get blood deep into the developing tissue. Fabricating a branch network of blood vessels to deliver oxygen and nutrients can't be done with 3D printing (it's too intricate).

Credit: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Researchers have now turned to plants for the answer, specifically spinach, and published their findings in the May issue of Biomaterials.

Plants work, despite fundamental differences in how they transport fluid compared to animals, because they share similar vascular structures. Plants like spinach can be decellularized (stripped of plant cells) and have cultured beating heart cells introduced. This is a proof of concept that can lead to significant advancements in tissue regeneration.

Spinach veins are seeded with human cells that line blood vessels, as seen in the image below:

A fluid similar to blood flows through the vasculature of a spinach leaf that has been stripped of plant cells. Researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) were able to culture beating human heart cells on such decelluralized leaves.

Credit: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

The remaining cellulose in the plant is biocompatible and harmless to people.

Check out the beating heart tissue in spinach below!

A close-up of beating human heart cells cultured on a spinach leaf that has been stripped of its plant cells, leaving behind the leaf's vasculature. The research was conducted by engineers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Credit: Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Biologists and biomedical engineers in the plant and animal domain are working together to expand the possibilities of this new line of research. More work is required to see where this research can take tissue engineering possibilities. But so far, the results are promising. Parsley, sweet wormwood and peanut hairy roots also work to remove the plant cells to regenerate certain tissues, but the spinach seems to be best for cardiac tissue which is highly vascular.

Lead author of the paper, Joshua Gerslak, said this method is highly beneficial for economic and environmental reasons as well:

"By exploiting the benign chemistry of plant tissue scaffolds, we could address the many limitations and high costs of synthetic, complex composite materials."

The next step to explore for this team is determining how various types of tissue grow differentially in plant-based scaffolds, as well as adding a secondary vascular network for the outflow of blood to get re-oxygenated and resupplied with nutrients.

It looks like spinach is going to help make people strong apart from simply eating it, right Popeye?

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Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.

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References:

• Researchers grow heart tissue on spinach leaves
• Joshua R. Gershlak et al, Crossing kingdoms: Using decellularized plants as perfusable tissue engineering scaffolds, Biomaterials (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.biomaterials.2017.02.011

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2017-03-26, 6:03pm