AMAZING!!!
This is really huge news (and I’m praying that it’s not just hype or a scam). Unfortunately, the only article about it circulating through the tubes is much too short; still, this is rather incredible stuff. And while this advance doesn’t allow us to grow back a limb just yet, this is an impressive leap in that direction and a major breakthrough for regenerative medicine in general.
RCS Highlights (basically, the majority of this short article):
Move over, newts and salamanders. The mouse may join you as the only [mammal] that can re-grow their own severed limbs. Researchers are reporting that a simple chemical cocktail can coax mouse muscle fibers to become the kinds of cells found in the first stages of a regenerating limb…
Darren R. Williams and Da-Woon Jung say their “relatively simple, gentle, and reversible” methods for creating the early stages of limb regeneration in mouse cells “have implications for both regenerative medicine and stem cell biology.” In the future, they suggest, the chemicals they use could speed wound healing by providing new cells at the injured site before the wound closes or becomes infected. Their methods might also shed light on new ways to switch adult cells into the all-purpose, so-called “pluripotent,” stem cells with the potential for growing into any type of tissue in the body.
The scientists describe the chemical cocktail that they developed and used to turn mouse muscle fibers into muscle cells. Williams and Jung then converted the muscle cells.. into fat and bone cells. Those transformations were remarkably similar to the initial processes that occur in the tissue of newts and salamanders that is starting to regrow severed limbs.
(see abstract here.)
