Another Major Veterinary Breakthrough Allowing Mice To Regrow Limbs

While lab mice are cute, I would like to see more advances for humans. The article: "Scientists Say They’ve Invented a Serum That Activates a Dormant Ability to Regrow Lost Limbs in Mammals"--Futurism. An excerpt:

    Basically, the researchers used a two-step process that mimics the way regenerative animals such as salamanders regrow lost tissue after amputation. They pull it off via a process known as epimorphic regeneration, in which lost limbs are first covered by a layer of skin cells. Local cells then rearrange themselves into a blastema, a temporary structure that forms the base-layer for the rest of the limb.

    By controlling this limb-loss process with a specially-engineered serum that sends signals to cells, researchers found they can encourage the growth of a blastema in mammals: lab mice, in this case.

    “This is really a two-step process,” Ken Muneoka, one of the authors of the study, said in a press release. “You first shift the cells away from scarring, and then you provide the signals that tell them what to build.”

    Unlike typical regenerative approaches which use external stem cells, this newly-uncovered process uses the cells that are locally available. As Muneoka put it: “they’re already there — you just need to learn how to get them to behave the way you want.”