Researchers find the help of spinach leaf to grow human heart tissue

A team of scientists have transformed spinach leaves into beating human heart tissue after primarily unfolding the idea during their lunch time.

The researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts wanted to develop a solution for widely prevailing organ donor shortage.

After understanding it’s difficulties to reproduce veins, the group determined to use the existing system already in place to use a spinach leaf by replacing spinach cells with human heart cells. Time reports.

"To be able to just take something as simple as a spinach leaf, which is an abundant plant, and actually turn that into a tissue that has the potential for blood to flow through it, is really very very exciting," said researcher Glenn Gaudette, the head of the WPI lab, in a video about the work.

The team published its pioneered finding in the journal Biomaterials. As engineers used soap to leave only the structural leaf supports, they replaced the spinach with the heart tissue that  "colonized the inner surfaces of the plant vasculature." After five days, the cells began to beat.

“It was definitely a double take,” bioengineer Joshua Gershlak says. “All of a sudden you see cells moving.”

The scientists injected the leaves with little beads the size of red blood cells to authenticate that the spinach veins could transport materials. 

 Gershlak told the Post that the researchers envision converting spinach to heart cells and grafting it onto damaged heart tissue in the future.