Could this man hold the secret to human regeneration?

This piece was awarded the 2013 IOP-STFC Journalism prize.
MODERN MEDICINE CLUTCHES at a number of dreams. Some, like developing an AIDS vaccine, can seem tantalizingly close. Others, like curing cancer, have frustrated so many minds for so many years that we’ve learned to temper our expectations.

Then there’s regeneration.

A future in which humans regrow lost or diseased body parts feels like a mirage. But why? After all, many species can accomplish the task with ease. A decapitated flatworm, for example, will grow a new head, replete with a new brain. For the first week of their lives, tadpoles can replace lost tails. And the axolotl, or Mexican salamander, has the ability to regenerate everything from its limbs and tail to its spinal cord and skin, all without any evidence of scarring. Even some mammals have limited regenerative abilities: every year, reindeer regrow their shedded antlers. And, in some circumstances, young rats that lose a leg can grow it back.

Humans have a sliver of regenerative capacity, too. If a child experiences a neat slice through the end of his fingertip, that tip will grow back — although the ability disappears sometime around the age of 12. The Greek legend of Prometheus, the god who was cursed to have an eagle peck out his liver each day, only to grow it back overnight, actually contains a grain of physiological truth: if you were to lose part of your liver, it would, in fact, repair itself. With the exception of our skin, it’s the only human organ that can do this.

Regenerating a small body part under special circumstances is one thing, but what if we could regrow entire lost limbs? What if we could signal to our bodies to regrow damaged retinal tissue — or even to regrow an entire eye? Michael Levin doesn’t think this is an outlandish fantasy. In fact, he thinks he may be on the path to figuring out how to do precisely that.

https://medium.com/matter/1e66944f0a8d/


A very long read but also very fascinating. This is something I will watch with interest as am skeptical he will succeed, but what a discovery this would be if he did!

Hmm. Seems a bit unlikely to me.

They grew an ear and grafted it on last year I seem to remember, and someone who had damaged their oesophagus, they grew a new one for that person and took out the damaged one and replaced it.

Gosh. I wouldn't have thought that possible. How did they do it?

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-07/using-lab-grown-trachea-surgeons-conduct-worlds-first-synthetic-organ-transplant

Thats the trachea and oesophagus one

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23508688

And thats the ear one

Didge , interesting piece, but as humans we can't grow  further adult teeth after losing them...only the odd few cases of this happen but scientists have managed to grow extra teeth In rats, but they are huge.

While their is truth truth to the liver repairing , certainly after a certain amount of damage anyway, the rest sounds like it's not going to happen in our lifetime!, but still interesting.

What do you think of those deceased folk who paid up front to have their bodies frozen until miracle is found to bring them back alive?

Just a wee bit Frankensein eh?!! 

lovedust wrote:
Gosh. I wouldn't have thought that possible. How did they do it?

  

IT ISN'T...

"Regrowing" single body parts (using various stem cell therapy and cloning techniques, for example..) isn't the same as "regeneration", to start with..

NOR is it yet possible to create "new" parts out of nothing..

I think more attention should be paid to just ho is making some of these claims on here, love' !   

lovedust wrote:

Hmm. Seems a bit unlikely to me.

   Too true, lovie... Too true..  It's ALL a load of bollocks !
The O/P story is basically a mixture of baloney, wishful thinking, and populist "pseudo scientific" thinking..

"Regeneration" ~ as opposed to the more 'simpler' (comparatively speaking..) regrowing of single body parts in laboratory conditions ~ is a natural occurrence that so far is ONLY to be found in "lower level" organisms such as plants and simpler animals such as jellyfish, earthworms and parasitic worms... (Pull a leg off a spider or a wing off an insect, and they don't grow a new one..).

Fundamentally speaking, IT is never seen to occur in the higher level vertebrates ~ mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians.. (Even when a fish, amphibian or reptile is seen to regrow a lost tail, fin or limb, [a perfect example of "stem cell therapy" at work in nature !] that replacement is never a good copy, but a shorter and smaller poor effort as such..).

Except in the odd science fiction and fantasy stories.
IF ONLY it could be done ?    :.3chuthluL/: