Not even Popeye would have guessed how powerful spinach could end up being, so much so that it could be used to create cardiac tissue.
Hear the research team at WPI explain how spinach leaves stripped of plant material leave behind the very vascular system human tissue needs to survive.
As they explained in their paper published in Biomaterials:
Cellulose, which is the most abundant component of plant cell walls, is a well-studied biomaterial for a variety of clinical applications. Cellulose is biocompatible and has been shown to promote wound healing. Furthermore, cellulosic tissue engineering scaffolds derived from decellularized apple slices have shown the ability for mammalian cell attachment and proliferation and were found to be biocompatible when implanted subcutaneously in vivo.
Who knows? Perhaps we can grow a new heart, after all.
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