A multi-disciplinary team of scientists made bio-engineering news
Scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Arkansas State University-Jonesboro have successfully constructed a mini version of the human heart by utilizing multiple spinach leaves as a kind of scaffolding which carries blood that could help grow layers of healthy human tissues. Their documented findings, which made bio-engineering news headlines were published in the journal, Biomaterials. This could prove revolutionary in the field of tissue regeneration and save many lives by providing a way to repair damaged organs.
#1.Group of Spinach Leaves
Scientists now have made bio-engineering news by creating an entire vascular system
Labs have been using 3-D printing and other new technologies for the re-creation of large- scale human tissue for the last few years, but the delicate blood vessels so vital to tissue health have proved much harder to duplicate until now. In the words of study co-author, Joshua Gershlak a graduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts:
“The main limiting factor for tissue engineering … is the lack of a vascular network. Without that, you get a lot of tissue death… I had done de-cellularization work on human hearts before and when I looked at the spinach leaf, its stem reminded me of an aorta. So I thought, let’s perfuse right through the stem. We weren’t sure it would work, but it turned out to be pretty easy and replicable. It’s working in many other plants.”
#2. Spinach Heart