REGENERATIVE MEDICINE

Regenerative medicine is the process of replacing or ‘regenerating’ human cells, tissues or organs to restore them to their usual way of working for those unfortunate people who may have had theirs damaged by age, illness or injury.  Regenerative medicine, therefore, makes use of cells, biomaterials, and molecules to mend structures in the body that doesn’t function properly anymore.

What makes regenerative medicine stand apart from many conventional drugs is that the latter mostly treat symptoms. In contrast, regenerative medicine aims to address the root of a patient’s problem by replacing lost cells or organs, or by mending a faulty gene.

This is an exciting time for scientists, clinical practitioners, and medical engineers to promote regeneration, as research has shown that diseased and injured tissues and, in fact, whole organs, can be potentially restored.  This field has exploded in popularity in recent years, due to the advances in stem cell biology and tissue engineering.

Regenerative medicine holds the promise of completely transforming human medicine by actually curing or treating diseases once really poorly managed with conventional drugs and medical procedures.

It was over 60 years ago that the first successful organ transplant took place, and this marked the beginning of a new era in the emerging field of organ transportation and can be given full credit for the first complete cure of a patient with end-stage organ disease.

This was then followed by the first effective cell therapies with bone marrow transplants, which allowed leukemic patients with allogeneic marrow transplants to be treated.  This was a breakthrough that has escalated into many medical procedures of regenerative medicine being delivered to the clinic today.

A Promising Future?

We tend to take for granted some of the significant successes of regenerative medicine in which we can list the transfusion of blood, which is now viewed as commonplace in most clinical settings.  Another regenerative medicine we are used to is the transplantation of bone marrow, giving patients with radiation damage or blood cancers the opportunity to make new, healthy blood cells using the donor’s bone marrow stem cells.

We can likewise marvel at cell therapy, which uses a patient’s cells in cases of severe burn and scald injuries when they don’t have sufficient amounts of undamaged skin for skin graft treatment.  In cases like this, skin cells are separated into a small biopsy and expanded in a specialized laboratory. Literally, millions of cells can be grown in a short period and transplanted onto the burn wound to help speed up healing.

So if the last 60 years have brought us blood transfusions, to bone marrow transplantation, cloning, the development of viral vectors, ES (embryonic stem cells) and, iPS (induced pluripotent stem) cells, genome editing, and organoids, then the future is looking extremely promising!  Long live regenerative medicine!