Regenerative Medicine

Science and engineering tend to conform to the limits of our collective imagination. For years humans have dreamed of the ability to recover from bodily harm by regrowing limbs and organs. The fundamental aim of the field of regenerative medicine is to do just that.

Recently comic book movies and their adaptations have put superhuman regeneration front and center in popular culture. The Wolverine, depicted below, is one of the most powerful and admired comic book characters of all time because of his ability to heal and shrug off horrendous bodily injuries. Because of his miraculous genetic predisposition the Wolverine regularly survives bullet spray, loss of arms and legs, and even recovers from being reduced to a single drop of blood in one comic. Naturally these crazy feats make the Wolverine immortal and basically indestructible.

While nothing in the real world can regenerate from a drop of blood, there are some interesting cases of natural regeneration in animals. Lizards can usually regenerate their tails. Sea cucumbers, flatworms, and starfish can also regrow portions of their own body in the event of injury. Perhaps most amazing of all is the axolotl, which can regenerate limbs just like Wolverine or Deadpool can in the comics, albeit in a much slower timeframe.

As it turns out, the key to understanding these superhuman abilities to regrow limbs is not in the individual cells, but in the nuance of the surrounding environment and how that influences cell signaling. The Freeman lab has developed potentially game-changing technologies to simulate these environments for the next generation of tissue engineering culture and differentiation.