再生醫學新發現 菠菜葉能培養人類心肌組織

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

美國科學家成功在菠菜葉上培育出人體心臟組織，併成功使其跳動長達三週。

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.

馬薩諸塞州伍斯特工學院的生物工程師格倫·高德特和約書亞·格爾謝拉領導的這一研究，他們的發現對一種致命的醫療問題--捐獻器官的缺乏是很是有價值的

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.

長期以來，科學家們試圖用3D打印等各種不同方法來製作人造器官，然而，迄今爲止這些方法無一成功。

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

人工製造心肌的主要問題之一是如何讓血液流向所有細胞。

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.

研究人員並未創建微小血管，而是選擇了自然生長的材料：菠菜葉。菠菜葉的葉脈與人體心臟中的血管相似。

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.

研究人員用洗滌劑洗去菠菜細胞，留下能與哺乳動物細胞相容的細胞膜質和完整的葉脈。因此葉子的結構得以保留。

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

之後研究人員將心肌細胞注入菠菜細胞騰出的空隙中，5天后心肌細胞開始跳動。