再生医学新发现 菠菜叶能培养人类心肌组织

US scientists have successfully cultivated human heart tissue on spinach leaves, and managed to make it beat for up to three weeks.

Bioengineers Glenn Gaudette and Joshua Gershlak at Massachusetts Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) led this research and their findings are valuable to a deadly medical problem: the lack of donor organs.

Scientists have long been trying different methods, such as 3-D printing, to create artificial organs. However, so far none of those methods has been successful.

One of the big problems in engineering heart muscle is getting blood flow to all of the cells.

Instead of creating minuscule blood vessels, researchers turned to the material that evolves in nature: spinach leaves, which have vessels that are similar to the blood vessels in a human heart.

They used detergent to wash away spinach cells. Cellulose, which is compatible to mammal cells, and intact leaf veins were left behind. Therefore, the frame of the leaves was reserved.

Then researchers seeded cardiac muscle cells into the vacancy left by spinach cells and after five days the muscle cells started to beat.

美国科学家成功在菠菜叶上培育出人体心脏组织，并成功使其跳动长达三周。

马萨诸塞州伍斯特工学院的生物工程师格伦·高德特和约书亚·格尔谢拉领导的这一研究，他们的发现对一种致命的医疗问题--捐献器官的缺乏是很是有价值的

长期以来，科学家们试图用3D打印等各种不同方法来制作人造器官，然而，迄今为止这些方法无一成功。

人工制造心肌的主要问题之一是如何让血液流向所有细胞。

研究人员并未创建微小血管，而是选择了自然生长的材料：菠菜叶。菠菜叶的叶脉与人体心脏中的血管相似。

研究人员用洗涤剂洗去菠菜细胞，留下能与哺乳动物细胞相容的细胞膜质和完整的叶脉。因此叶子的结构得以保留。

之后研究人员将心肌细胞注入菠菜细胞腾出的空隙中，5天后心肌细胞开始跳动。