REGENERATIVE MEDICINE
WHY DO WE NEED IT?
• In 2011, 28, 537 organ transplants were done in the U.S. 1,042 of these were
done in North Carolina. More than 100,000 people are waiting for an organ,
the majority of them waiting for a kidney.
• An average of 18 people die each day waiting.
BACKGROUND TO REGENERATION
• Tissues are groups of similar cells performing a similar function.
• Organs are made up of multiple tissues working together to
perform a particular function.
• Scientists are researching ways to regenerate more than 30
different tissues and organs including: skin, blood vessels,
bladders, bone, kidneys, lungs and livers.
HOW DO YOU BUILD A NEW ORGAN?
• The first step to building a new organ is to build a scaffold. This supportive structure
to tissues and organs is called the extracellular matrix. It is where the cells of tissues
and organs live.
• When you remove the cells and leave just the scaffold, this is called decellularization.
Then, the scaffold can be uses to build a new tissue or organ.
• The scaffold determines how the cells will be organized, which will determine how
they will grow. For example, cardiac tissues are arranged a certain way to make the
heart function. This scaffolding material can come from human donors or from
biomaterial, which is often more readily available.
STEM CELLS
• A huge portion of regenerative medicine relies on the use of stem
cells. This has been extremely controversial. Several areas of
regenerative medicine currently using stem cells are: treatment of
burn patients, treatment of blood disorders, treatment of
progressive eye diseases, organ transplant rejection research, and
new bone growth.
WHO IS THE LEADER IN REGENERATIVE RESEARCH?
• North Carolina
• Dr. Anthony Atala, the director of the Wake Forest Institute for
Regenerative Medicine(WFIRM), used a kidney grown outside the
body to save a boy born with spina bifida in ten tears ago.