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What is Regenerative Medicine?

Regenerative Medicine harnesses the power of stem cells to repair, regenerate or replace diseased cells, tissues and organs. 

Imagine if medicine could reverse the devastating effects of cardiovascular disease or allow children with diabetes to live day to day without insulin injections or pumps. Far from a science fiction scenario, these are realistic goals for regenerative medicine.

At the McEwen Centre, Investigators are using regenerative medicine to challenge conventional approaches to treating disease.

The Promise of Regenerative Medicine

Regenerative Medicine has the potential to change the face of medical care, and provide new hope for millions of people. Conditions which are currently the subject of research at the McEwen Centre for Regenerative Medicine include:

• Heart Disease
• Spinal Cord Injury and Neurodegenerative Diseases
• Diabetes
• Blood Cell Disorders
• Lung Diseases

Areas of Regenerative Medicine Research

The multidisciplinary field of Regenerative Medicine includes several research areas, including stem cell biology, cellular therapy and tissue engineering.

Stem Cell Biology: Stem cells are undifferentiated—or unspecialized—cells that are capable of renewing themselves indefinitely and that, under the proper conditions, have a unique capability to give rise to specialized cell types (for example muscle cells, neurons, heart cells, etc.).

The tremendous therapeutic potential of stem cells lies in their remarkable potential to generate a variety of specialized cell types. If stem cells can be grown in the laboratory and coaxed into producing various types of specialized cells, they could provide a renewable and virtually unlimited source of cells for cellular therapy and tissue engineering to treat diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's diseases, spinal cord injury, heart disease, diabetes or osteoarthritis. Stem cells are not unlike building blocks that can be shaped and used to repair diseased organs or produce new tissues.

Cellular Therapy: Many disease conditions are caused by the malfunction or death of specific cell types. For example:

• Parkinson’s disease is caused by the death of a special type of neuron in the brain;

• Type I (or juvenile) diabetes is caused by the death of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

• Heart failure—a potentially fatal condition that can develop following a heart attack—may occur because cardiac muscle cells die or can’t function properly.

Scientists are developing cellular therapies—the transplantation of live cells—to replace defective cells and attempt to restore normal function in a wide range of diseases.

It has become increasingly evident, however, that the first step to effective cellular therapy is to understand how cells communicate and how this goes awry in disease conditions. Scientists at the McEwen Centre are also focused on this aspect of cellular therapy.

Potential sources of cells for cell therapy:

• Autologous: the cells are harvested from an individual, grown in the laboratory and reimplanted in the same individual.

• Allogenic: Cells are obtained from donors.

• Xenogenic: Cells are obtained from a different species.

Tissue Engineering: Tissue engineering combines the principles of material engineering and biomedical sciences to develop bioartificial tissues and organs that can be used as ‘replacement parts’ to repair or replace damaged or diseased organs.

The process generally involves growing various cell types—often obtained directly from the patient to reduce rejection—onto three-dimensional scaffolds which are then implanted into the patient. These scaffolds are carefully designed to allow the cells to develop into tissues that mirror the natural structure and function of the damaged body part.

In laboratories around the world, tissue engineered constructs have been successfully developed for skin, bladder cartilage and bone. Research is currently underway to produce a wide range of tissues such as heart ‘patches’, heart valves, blood vessels, artificial blood, artificial corneas, amongst others. Tissue engineering could provide a viable alternative to organ transplantation, artificial prosthesis or mechanical devices.