Nicholas Wade, in today’s New York Times asks why humans can’t regenerate body parts like salamanders, which are capable of growing replacement limbs, intestines, tail, jaw, and parts of the eye. Regenerative medicine—the most common branch of which is stem cell therapy—focuses on the body’s ability to repair itself using its own systems.
“In many of these cases, regeneration begins when the mature cells at the site of a wound start to revert to an immature state. The clump of immature cells, known as a blastema, then regrows the missing part, perhaps by tapping into the embryogenesis program that first formed the animal.”
The capability to regenerate must be a basic part of our genetic makeup, so the theory goes, but we’ve somehow “forgotten” how to do it. Researchers have recently identified a gene in zebra fish, called fgf20, that is believed to be responsible for regeneration, or at least “for initiating blastema formation.” The same gene also exists in humans. Perhaps, researchers believe, there’s a way to “switch on” the gene, probably through the use of a proprietary drug. These are, after all, pharmaceutical company researchers we’re talking about.
Wade notes that even the basic biology of regeneration is not understood. But ask any non-Western medical practitioner about salamanders, identified by Paracelsus as the elemental of fire.
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