When we go to the doctor there are words we do not want to hear. We are afraid to hear words like Diabetes, Osteoarthritis, Parkinson’s, Heart or Respiratory Failure, Alzheimer’s or any other diagnosis that assumes we are suffering from a degenerative disease related to aging. It may not kill us, but it has no solution, and we will have to live with it and the limitations it imposes on us without the hope of a cure, of returning to the way we were before.
Regenerative medicine tries to turn this fear into hope. In this case, it is a concept that we are all familiar with, but few know for sure what it really means, when it is very simple. It is basically a matter of accelerating and enhancing our own body’s usual healing mechanisms, applying them to organs and tissues that are not capable of healing themselves. To date, this technology has been used successfully in elite athletes, shortening recovery times and regenerating very complex injuries. Now, it is available to all of us.
The revolution in regenerative medicine
Until now, the way to deal with these degenerative diseases was through prevention to avoid their appearance or, at least, to delay them. The alternative was to treat the symptoms that occurred, assuming the damage caused to our organs without being able to modify it. Now, through regenerative medicine we try to anticipate the symptoms, diagnose the disease at very early levels, ideally asymptomatic or with minimal expression, and treat it in such a way as to restore the integrity and normal functioning of the organs.
For example: the onset of osteoarthritis of the knee can be prevented by strengthening our muscles and avoiding joint overload. In addition, it can also be successfully treated when it is already very advanced with a prosthesis, although it will never be like having our own joint.
Regenerative medicine allows us to treat osteoarthritis in early stages and return the joint to its original state. It is not science fiction, it is a reality that is already here and that will bring about a real revolution in the coming years.
Tools of regenerative medicine
In regenerative medicine, three tools are used that are combined differently depending on the degree of tissue degeneration, as follows:
- Cell therapy: based on the use of stem cells capable of replacing damaged cells.
- Growth factors: bioactive proteins that stimulate and regulate the cascade of regenerative processes.
- Biomaterials, which are the scaffolding on which regeneration takes place.
Types of stem cells in regenerative medicine
There are two types of stem cells; embryonic and adult stem cells. The use of embryonic stem cells has raised numerous ethical problems, whereas the use of adult stem cells is universally accepted.
In the case of adult stem cells, these are the reserve cells that the organism itself stores for use in case of need. Stem cells exist in all organs, but they differ from each other only in their potential to become specific cells of one or several tissues, so we speak of unipotential or pluripotential cells depending on whether or not they can give rise to cells of one or multiple tissues.
They are very primitive cells, capable of multiplying indefinitely once activated and of regenerating themselves, although their reserve is limited and diminishes over the years. The two most important types of adult stem cells are hematopoietic and mesenchymal, being the precursors of blood cells. The latter can become cells of the locomotor system, the nervous system, the heart, the skin and a large part of the internal organs.
Hematopoietic stem cells have been known and successfully used for a long time. Their applications are bone marrow transplants for patients with oncological blood diseases. However, they are currently limited in that they cannot be used to regenerate cell lines other than blood.
Today, all hopes are focused on mesenchymal stem cells. These cells initially seemed to be intended only for repairing injuries to the musculoskeletal system. However, it has been shown that they are capable of regenerating almost all the tissues of our body.
The second main element of regenerative medicine is growth factors, which are basically proteins secreted by blood cells, especially platelets.
When a tissue is damaged, platelets go through the bloodstream to the site of the injury. Once there, they adhere to each other and to the damaged tissue, forming a clot, a kind of plug that stops the bleeding.
When they are stuck together, the contents of granules inside them are released, the growth factors, which are responsible for initiating multiple biological effects related to tissue regeneration.
In regenerative medicine, this natural way of stimulating regeneration is amplified and taken to tissues that do not have the capacity to produce it, usually because they have little blood supply.
These growth factors can be used alone, applied in cases of incipient degeneration, or together with stem cells and biomaterials when the degeneration is more advanced.
The third basic pillar of regenerative medicine is biomaterials. They can be defined as the vital support so that stem cells can multiply and become the cells of the damaged tissue.
This is an important element for recovering the normal function of an organ that, in addition to noble cells, requires support cells to form the structure.
This is currently one of the areas that generates the most research resources, since it is the main limitation to the regeneration of complete organs.
However, the future will be 3D bioprinting, which will make it possible to design and build the structure of an organ or tissue to measure, which will be colonized by stem cells.
As always happens with anything new, and even more so if health-related topics are included, opportunistic people with few scruples appear who offer “miracle treatments” with benefits that have no scientific evidence whatsoever.
The lack of patient information allows them to extract partial information from serious studies and well-developed treatments to support their fraudulent therapies. This is detrimental to treatments that are developed based on scientific evidence, as it creates a certain distrust in these techniques.
For the benefits of regenerative medicine to become a reality, it is necessary for patients to trust in professionals with proven experience and solvent professional trajectory.