The NEW
cutting edge science
of Regenerative Medicine
Andy Rooney, I believe, said it best – The idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone. For many, “old age” bears to mind a connotation of disease and limited mobility. Consider this - what if we can maintain brain function, restore heart function and limit organ systems failures? The paradigm then shifts to a long life well lived - think centenarian, being as active at 90 as we were at 40. There are several pathways to a long healthy life well lived, one emerging key is regenerative therapies.
There are several components necessary to achieve tissue regeneration. I like to use the analogy of the full orchestra. The regenerative process requires an entire orchestra of several instruments to truly achieve tissue regeneration. What are the components of this orchestra?
Extracellular matrix - the scaffold that holds all of our cells in place. Within the extracellular matrix, we have all of our collagen substrates, laminin and fibronectin. These components not only provide a scaffold for tissue growth, but also cell regulation – preventing abnormal or disorganized cell growth or overgrowth.
Growth factor proteins - there are approximately 3500 different growth factors aka cytokines that provide the proper instructions and/or components to direct neutral cells (blank) to become specialized cells. For example, for a fibroblast to convert to a tenocyte (base tendon cell) there needs to be a specific combination of growth factors that provide the instructions and components for that fibroblast to become a tenocyte.
Intracellular messengers - Exosomes, Secretomes with microRNA that pass through cell walls to communicate from cell to cell instruction sets, directing the nucleus and mitochondria as to what proteins, or materials to form, or to direct the cell to become specialized.
Cellular components - MSC (Mesenchymal Stem Cells) alternatively named medicinal signaling cells by Dr. Arnold Caplan. MSC’s modulate the immune system cells, as well as produce the appropriate combination of growth factors, exosomes,and microRNa to directs other cells such as fibroblasts and keritinocytes to form specialized functioning cells such as chondrocytes to form cartilage, or myocytes to form muscle, or tenocytes to form tendon cells.
The above four components work together in concert to heal and rebuild injured tissue. When we are young and healthy our bodies are incredible healing machines - it has many vibrant MSC’s, good circulation, good hormonal balance, good nutrition – healing on its own. As we age, the ability to heal ourselves is diminished, we have less MSC’s circulating, our hormonal balance is not as robust, our immune system may be altered from environmental exposures, we are taking pharmaceuticals that alter the behavior of our bodies (pharmaceuticals are toxins with a few good side effects).
Regenerative therapies amplify or upregulate our body’s ability to respond to trauma, injury, and environmental assaults so that we can be more active, more present in the moment, and reduce our need for pharmaceuticals and surgery.