The Future Of Cell Regeneration

The future of cell regeneration

 When the loss of a part of the body occurs, the cells that are in the affected place have two options: heal or regenerate. In the case of human beings, the first option corresponds to us, since our body cannot regenerate organs after an amputation;unlike certain animals that can achieve it due to the presence of certain cells that give them this ability to regenerate parts of their body;as is in the case of sponges, which present a high regeneration capacity. But somehow this would be explained, and it is due to the increase in complexity that the human being possesses, since the greater the specialization of organs and tissues would be more difficult to rebuild one that would be lost.

However, sponges have greater ease to regenerate, because they do not have specialized tissues, but they have a large number of totipotent cells. These totipotent cells present in sea sponges are capable of becoming any type of cell that the animal needs at a certain moment. In addition to the great regeneration power attributed to them, even on those occasions in which they find great losses of body mass, it is said that they have a unique cellular repair system.

It is worth mentioning that in this regeneration process there are two important characteristics that are to direct the formation of the lost organ and, on the other hand, the memory, since only the missing part is always regenerated, and this assumes that the cells that goTo initiate regeneration they know in some way what level the amputation has occurred.

So, regeneration begins with a cell differentiation process. This structure is made up of cells that come together in the place of the wound and that are totipotent, that is, they are able to generate all types of tissues, such as the first cells in the development of the embryo. And after closing the affected area, these unlikely cells are divided to give rise to more cells and then begin to specialize to generate the necessary structures.

On the other hand, to promote regeneration in humans, the presence of stem cells in the wound should be identified.The problem is that humans do not have a large amount of totipotent stem cells distributed throughout the body as certain animals that have the ease of regenerating.

Certainly there are adult stem cells, which are responsible for the renewal of tissues, these are present scarcely, and are not easily incorporated when a wound occurs and also their capacity for differentiation is limited, not being able to generate all types of tissuebut only part. That is why a line of research consists of isolating adult stem cells of any patient, cultivating and expanding them in the laboratory, and then differentiating them from specific tissues using specific mixtures of differentiation factors. The idea is to apply them to the area that is required to rebuild.

The most feasible alternative would be to use embryonic stem cells, which come directly from the first stages of cell division after the fertilization of the ovule. These stem cells are pluripotent, that is, they can be divided into more stem cells or can become any body cell. Thus, these cells are used to regenerate damaged cells or repair tissues, sick organs and for the treatment of certain diseases. The technique that allows to preserve stem cells from the tissue or the blood of the umbilical cord and the placenta of a newborn, is called cryopreservation;And it is a process in which stem cells are preserved for a period of time at low temperatures in liquid nitrogen (-196 ° C), for later use in the treatment of various diseases.

The advantage of the study of the mechanisms of regeneration of certain species such as sponges is that they allow a genetic analysis, so that the roads involved in the regenerative response could be accurately described and to be able to have that contribution to be able to apply the advances toMedicine someday, meanwhile stem cells become a new medical alternative and must be taken into account that in the future the use of stem cells will contribute to endless treatments of incurable diseases.