Spinach Linked as a Possible Key to Repairing Damaged Organs
Maybe Popeye was onto something after all.
FOX’s Alex Hein has the details on groundbreaking research involving spinach leaves:
This is Housecall for Health.
A team of scientists in Massachusetts successfully converted a spinach leaf into a tiny beating human heart muscle, which is a step they hope might one day help doctors repair damaged organs.
The team swapped the plants cells for human cells, which transformed the plants veins into a blood vessel network. They said they chose spinach for the groundbreaking experiment because of the leaf’s complex vein system.
Once the human tissue had developed, the next step involved pushing fluids through the leaf to show blood could flow through a similar system in the future.
The hope is that the tissue built out of spinach leaves could be implanted into patients with damaged hearts, and restore blood flow to areas of the organ that have been damaged by disease, trauma or infection.
The development is exciting, and researchers did call it promising, but they also cautioned that they have much work left to do.
For more on this story, check FOXNewsHealth.com.
Housecall for Health, I’m Alex Hein, FOX News.
