Macrophages Implicated in the Scarring of Heart Tissue Following Injury

A potentially important faction within the regenerative medicine community is engaged in trying to understand exactly how highly regenerative species such as salamanders and zebrafish can regenerate organs following injury, and do so repeatedly without scarring. There are also a few examples of adult mammals capable of regenerating a limited number of body parts without scarring, such as African spiny mice and the MRL mouse lineage. It seems plausible that mammalian species still carry much of the machinery of proficient regeneration, but that this machinery is suppressed in some way, possibly because that suppression acts to reduce cancer risk. Evidence in support of that thesis includes the ability of human tumor suppressor ARF to block zebrafish regeneration. Thus understanding of the fine details of the ways in which highly regenerative species differ from near all mammals might lead to ways to induce limb and organ regrowth in humans. It is still a little early to say whether or not these differences will in fact include anything that could be the basis of a therapy. The differences might be too complex, or too fundamental to easily alter with today's tools. That said, there is compelling evidence for macrophage behavior to be fundamental to exceptional regeneration. All regeneration is an intricate dance between somatic cells, stem cells and progenitor cells of various types, transient senescent cells, and immune cells, particularly macrophages. In this co...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs