Are Plants a Source for Human Tissue?

The need for organs and tissues is more than the donors available for transplantation. One of the factors affecting applicability of tissue engineered solutions is vascularization and angiogenesis. Even the latest techniques in manufacturing scaffold lacked precision in producing vascular network in the graft. Instead of engineering a vascular network the current focus has shifted towards acellular scaffolds of plants and mammalian tissue.

A group of multidisciplinary researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and other institutes were successfully able to grow cardiomyocytes cells on decellularized scaffolds of Spinacia oleracea leaves (Spinach). Human aorta and veins of the leaves have pretty much same structure, this encouraged researchers to use leaf as scaffold for tissue engineering. Spinacia oleracea leaves petiole were cannulated and injected with decellularization solution, this made the leaf to loose chlorophyll and significant amount of DNA contents and made the leaf translucent.

The decellularized leaf contains polysaccharides like cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin which are know to enhance wound healing and used bone tissue engineering. The decellularized scaffold was injected with Ponceau red in order to study the flow in vascular network. Further human pluripotent stem cells derived from cardiomyocytes (hPS-CM) seeded onto the surface of scaffold and forms cell cluster and within few days the contraction of cells starts.

This novel approach faces its own unique challenges like integration of plant vasculature to human vasculature, development as tissue etc., still this approach has opened a new field of science that investigates mimicry between kingdom and possibly give a green solution for tissue engineering.

References:

• Biomaterials. 2017 May; 125: 13–22. Published online 2017 Feb 10. doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2017.02.011 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5388455/)