Hello Steemies,
Researchers have turned a spinach leaf into working heart tissue.
Yep you heard right. Scientists have found a way to use spinach to build working human heart muscle, potentially solving a long-standing problem in efforts to repair damaged organs.
This opens a lot of doors for the tissue engineers and removed a big roadblock for them, that they have been working on for a long time.
Scientiest have already recreated human tissues with 3D-Printers, but failed to recreate the small and delicate blood vessels that are vital to tissue health. But plants could prove to be the ideal partners because their delicate veins also appear to be capable of delivering blood via a vascular system into the new tissue.
The eventual goal is to be able to replace damaged tissue in patients who have had heart attacks or who have suffered other cardiac issues that prevent their hearts from contracting.
We have a lot more work to do, but so far this is very promising,
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.
This news is more than fucking amazing and will change the way we treat our heart attack patients. I can only imagine how well we can treat them in the future. Just let me say this one final thing: Spinach is healthy for you guys!