A team of scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and CellThera, a private company located in WPI's Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, have regenerated functional muscle tissue in mice, opening the door for a new clinical therapy to treat people who suffer major muscle trauma.

The team used a novel protocol to coax mature human muscle cells into a stem cell-like state and grew those reprogrammed cells on biopolymer microthreads. The threads were placed in a wound created by surgically removing a large section of leg muscle from a mouse. Over time, the threads and cells restored near-normal function to the muscle, as reported in the paper "Restoration of Skeletal Muscle Defects with Adult Human Cells Delivered on Fibrin Microthreads," published in the current issue of the journal Tissue Engineering.

Continued here: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-body-rebuilding-regenerate-muscle-mice.html

Darkchilde wrote:From physorg: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-body-rebuilding-regenerate-muscle-mice.html\

A team of scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and CellThera, a private company located in WPI's Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, have regenerated functional muscle tissue in mice, opening the door for a new clinical therapy to treat people who suffer major muscle trauma.

The team used a novel protocol to coax mature human muscle cells into a stem cell-like state and grew those reprogrammed cells on biopolymer microthreads. The threads were placed in a wound created by surgically removing a large section of leg muscle from a mouse. Over time, the threads and cells restored near-normal function to the muscle, as reported in the paper "Restoration of Skeletal Muscle Defects with Adult Human Cells Delivered on Fibrin Microthreads," published in the current issue of the journal Tissue Engineering.

Continued here: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-body-rebuilding-regenerate-muscle-mice.html

This is very promising, indeed. If we can regenerate muscles, maybe some organs are next? Maybe even be able to regenerate vital organs for transplant and people do not have to wait for the death of someone else, and no rejection syndrome and similar.

Dudely wrote: Muscles don't include the complex collagen lattice in which organs cells sit. The best we have been able to do with organ regeneration thus far is strip a donor's organ of their cells and repopulate it with stem cells taken from the patient. Bladders are easy to do this with, apparently, and I beleive some (very few) people are walking around with bladders grown in this way.

Darkchilde wrote:From physorg: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-body-rebuilding-regenerate-muscle-mice.html

A team of scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and CellThera, a private company located in WPI's Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, have regenerated functional muscle tissue in mice, opening the door for a new clinical therapy to treat people who suffer major muscle trauma.

HughMcB wrote:I could do with regenerating a slim waistline.