Regenerative Medicine

This interdisciplinary field of medicine is focused on stimulating the body's own repair mechanisms to functionally heal previously irreparable tissues or organs.
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Technology Life Cycle

Technology Life Cycle

R&D

Initial phase where new technologies are conceptualized and developed. During this stage, technical viability is explored and initial prototypes may be created.

Technology Readiness Level (TRL)

Technology Readiness Level (TRL)

Proof-of-concept

Research is considered viable and ready for further development after experimental analysis of the technology concept.

Technology Diffusion

Technology Diffusion

Early Adopters

Embrace new technologies soon after Innovators. They often have significant influence within their social circles and help validate the practicality of innovations.

Regenerative Medicine

Grounded in engineering and life science principles, regenerative medicine is the process of replacing or regenerating cells, tissues or organs to restore or establish normal function. Examples of regenerative medicine include cell therapies (the injection of stem cells or progenitor cells), immunomodulation therapy (regeneration by biologically active molecules administered alone or as secretions by infused cells), and tissue engineering (transplantation of laboratory-grown organs and tissues). In the latter, if a regenerated organ's cell source is derived from the patient's own tissue or cells, the challenge of organ transplant rejection via immunological mismatch is avoided. The goal is to restore, maintain, or improve damaged tissues or whole organs. It encompasses numerous strategies, including the use of generated cells or materials, as well as various combinations thereof, to take the place of missing tissue, effectively replacing it both functionally and structurally, or to contribute to tissue healing.

Created by the secretions of groups of cells, the extra-cellular matrix or scaffold is more than just a support for cells; it also relays various signaling molecules, with cells receiving messages from many sources that become available from the local environment. Researchers are focused on understanding how individual cells react to signals, interact with their environment, and organize into tissues and organisms so that they can manipulate these processes to mend damaged tissues or create new ones. The process starts either by building a scaffold, from proteins to plastics, and once created, cells (with or without growth factors) are introduced to it. If the environment is correct, a tissue develops or a new tissue can be created using an existing scaffold with the cells of a donor organ stripped and the remaining collagen scaffold used to grow new tissue. In this manner, heart, liver, lung, and kidney tissue has been bioengineered in labs.

While still a relatively young field, regenerative medicine is a promising solution for a variety of incurable degenerative conditions and could help to revolutionize healthcare treatment. Research has explored several applications, including Type 1 diabetes, wound healing, brain injuries, cardiac function, and eye conditions.

Future perspectives

Though it offers a promising solution, regenerative medicine faces many challenges before it can become mainstream, the most challenging of which are efficiency and safety issues. If these challenges can be overcome, regenerative medicine could be used in the future across a range of medical applications.

It holds the potential to regenerate damaged heart tissue after a heart attack, repair spinal cord injuries, regenerate bone and cartilage, and restore damaged organs such as the liver or kidneys. Since the shortage of organ donors is a significant current problem, Regenerative Medicine could offer alternatives to this by growing organs and tissues in the laboratory, using a patient's own cells or using stem cells to stimulate organ regeneration, which would also decrease the rate of organ transplant rejection.

Currently, untreatable conditions like Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular diseases, and spinal cord injuries could be treated using strategies to repair or replace damaged nerve cells. Furthermore, regenerative medicine could address age-related degeneration by rejuvenating or replacing aged cells and tissues, leading to advancements in anti-ageing therapies and the restoration of youthful functions.

If combined with artificial intelligence, soft intelligence biomaterials, and nanorobotics, regenerative medicine potential could be heightened even further.

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Sources
Find out about Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine and how they work.
The rapid progress in the field of stem cell research has laid strong foundations for their use in regenerative medicine applications of injured or diseased tissues. Growing evidences indicate that some observed therapeutic outcomes of stem cell-based therapy are due to paracrine effects rather than long-term engraftment and survival of transplanted cells. Given their ability to cross biological barriers and mediate intercellular information transfer of bioactive molecules, extracellular vesicles are being explored as potential cell-free therapeutic agents. In this review, we first discuss the state of the art of regenerative medicine and its current limitations and challenges, with particular attention on pluripotent stem cell-derived products to repair organs like the eye, heart, skeletal muscle and skin. We then focus on emerging beneficial roles of extracellular vesicles to alleviate these pathological conditions and address hurdles and operational issues of this acellular strategy. Finally, we discuss future directions and examine how careful integration of different approaches presented in this review could help to potentiate therapeutic results in preclinical models and their good manufacturing practice (GMP) implementation for future clinical trials.
Regenerative medicine may be defined as the process of replacing or "regenerating" human cells, tissues or organs to restore or establish normal function. This field holds the promise of regenerating damaged tissues and organs in the body by replacing damaged tissue or by stimulating the body's own repair mechanisms to heal tissues or organs. Regenerative medicine also may enable scientists to grow tissues and organs in the laboratory and safely implant them when the body is unable to heal itself. Current estimates indicate that approximately one in three Americans could potentially benefit from regenerative medicine.
Journal Development Editor, Jasmine Hagan, shares her top papers from the January, February and March issues of Regenerative Medicine.
Discussing the successes of the regenerative medicine sector and moving towards the development of cell and gene therapies.
•The most recent advances in regenerative medicine were presented.•Various protocols of regenerative medicine already in use were discussed.•Stem cells therapy, organoids Scaffolds, and gene editing were covered.•The applications of 3D bioprinting, living robotics, and soft nanorobotics were presented.
Organ and tissue loss through disease and injury motivate the development of therapies that can regenerate tissues and decrease reliance on transplantations. Regenerative medicine, an interdisciplinary field that applies engineering and life science principles to promote regeneration, can potentially restore diseased and injured tissues and whole organs. Since the inception of the field several decades ago, a number of regenerative medicine therapies, including those designed for wound healing and orthopedics applications, have received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and are now commercially available. These therapies and other regenerative medicine approaches currently being studied in preclinical and clinical settings will be covered in this review. Specifically, developments in fabricating sophisticated grafts and tissue mimics and technologies for integrating grafts with host vasculature will be discussed. Enhancing the intrinsic regenerative capacity of the host by altering its environment, whether with cell injections or immune modulation, will be addressed, as well as methods for exploiting recently developed cell sources. Finally, we propose directions for current and future regenerative medicine therapies.

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