W
wes
Guest
<font color="0000ff">Photo at URL below</font>
<u>DESERET NEWS</u> (Salt Lake City, Utah) 05 May 06 U. joins limb-regeneration project - It will study possibilities on the molecular level (Lois M. Collins)
Remove a newt's limb and within a couple of months it has regenerated a new one. Scientists think the "why" and "how" might one day allow wounded soldiers and others to similarly regenerate damaged tissue and limbs.
The University of Utah is one of five centers that will work with the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine on a $3.7 million project aimed at understanding how wounds heal and the cellular and molecular systems that let some animals replace their own lost parts.
The purpose, said Shannon Odelberg, assistant professor of cardiology at the U., is to figure out if human cells can be coaxed to do the same thing.
The grant is funded by the government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which last week announced a grant to develop a bionic arm. The one-year grant could be renewed for three more years.
The U.'s role is to try to identify the molecular basis for limb regeneration and identify the factors that contribute to formation of a blastema. That's a collection of progenitor cells that form at the tip of a limb where amputation occurred in newts. The fact that it doesn't happen on humans is probably a major reason people cannot regenerate lost limbs. Progenitor cells are similar to stem cells. They are "undifferentiated" and can therefore give rise to an entirely new structure.
In newts, de-differentiation of more mature cells also seems to be required in the process to form a blastema — the mature cells somehow drifting backward to a less complex form.
Odelberg said U. researchers will try to identify the molecular signature of a blastema, in the hopes of finding out what genes are turned on in one. That knowledge could be used to spark regenerative response in mammals, he said.
The project will take several approaches, including looking at intact tissues versus regenerating tissues to see if they can find changes in gene expression that are important to the process.
The project's coordinator at Pittsburgh, Dr. Stephen Badylak, believes tissue restoration will one day be possible. Humans regenerate some cells, such as liver cells or red blood cells. During embryonic development, mammals and birds regenerate tissue and structures including skin and spinal cord. A release accompanying the announcement says that people develop scar tissue where salamanders and newts form blastemas. Furthermore, a certain type of mouse has enhanced regenerative capabilities, able to regenerate a portion of its ear or heart tissue following an injury.
If it proves possible to induce blastema formation in a mammal that doesn't normally generate one, it won't happen for some time. There's too much to do. "We want to translate what we learn in the newt into trying to reproduce some of the same types of processes in mammals," he said. "We want to try to get it to work in a mouse."
The other centers participating include University of Massachusetts at Lowell, the Wister Institute in Philadelphia, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Children's Memorial Research Center and Northwestern University.
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635205029,00.html
<u>DESERET NEWS</u> (Salt Lake City, Utah) 05 May 06 U. joins limb-regeneration project - It will study possibilities on the molecular level (Lois M. Collins)
Remove a newt's limb and within a couple of months it has regenerated a new one. Scientists think the "why" and "how" might one day allow wounded soldiers and others to similarly regenerate damaged tissue and limbs.
The University of Utah is one of five centers that will work with the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine on a $3.7 million project aimed at understanding how wounds heal and the cellular and molecular systems that let some animals replace their own lost parts.
The purpose, said Shannon Odelberg, assistant professor of cardiology at the U., is to figure out if human cells can be coaxed to do the same thing.
The grant is funded by the government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which last week announced a grant to develop a bionic arm. The one-year grant could be renewed for three more years.
The U.'s role is to try to identify the molecular basis for limb regeneration and identify the factors that contribute to formation of a blastema. That's a collection of progenitor cells that form at the tip of a limb where amputation occurred in newts. The fact that it doesn't happen on humans is probably a major reason people cannot regenerate lost limbs. Progenitor cells are similar to stem cells. They are "undifferentiated" and can therefore give rise to an entirely new structure.
In newts, de-differentiation of more mature cells also seems to be required in the process to form a blastema — the mature cells somehow drifting backward to a less complex form.
Odelberg said U. researchers will try to identify the molecular signature of a blastema, in the hopes of finding out what genes are turned on in one. That knowledge could be used to spark regenerative response in mammals, he said.
The project will take several approaches, including looking at intact tissues versus regenerating tissues to see if they can find changes in gene expression that are important to the process.
The project's coordinator at Pittsburgh, Dr. Stephen Badylak, believes tissue restoration will one day be possible. Humans regenerate some cells, such as liver cells or red blood cells. During embryonic development, mammals and birds regenerate tissue and structures including skin and spinal cord. A release accompanying the announcement says that people develop scar tissue where salamanders and newts form blastemas. Furthermore, a certain type of mouse has enhanced regenerative capabilities, able to regenerate a portion of its ear or heart tissue following an injury.
If it proves possible to induce blastema formation in a mammal that doesn't normally generate one, it won't happen for some time. There's too much to do. "We want to translate what we learn in the newt into trying to reproduce some of the same types of processes in mammals," he said. "We want to try to get it to work in a mouse."
The other centers participating include University of Massachusetts at Lowell, the Wister Institute in Philadelphia, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Children's Memorial Research Center and Northwestern University.
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,635205029,00.html
