Regenerative medicine is the process of producing living, functional body tissues to repair or restore damaged or torn body tissues. The process has been hailed as a futuristic technology that may be used in conjunction with other tissue engineering techniques. These medicines regenerate damaged tissues or even organs by causing such tissues and organs to repair themselves, hence heal, and have been exploited by scientists in laboratories. Due to this technology, it is now possible to grow tissues and organs outside the body and implant them safely into the body in instances where the body cannot heal itself. Most importantly, this technology has the ability to be a solution to the deficiency of organs available for donation compared to the number of persons that need these life-saving organ transplants (Gimble et al, 2007). It will also be a solution to the problem of organ transplant rejection as the cells to be grown will be removed from the body of the patients.
Mason and Dunhill (2008) write that since the technology is a very recent one, a common definition has not been agreed upon, neither have people wholly understood what the process entails. Currently, there are a lot of lengthy and complex definitions of the process that would make it difficult to comprehend. These complications have arisen because regenerative medicine culminates out of several processes such as surgery, surgical implants, and ever more complex biometric technologies. It also includes hospital procedures such as bone marrow and organ transplants and how it relates to tissue engineering. The authors contend that each of these processes has a weakness and may not lead to a fully healthy individual. However, technological advances may reduce such flaws and regenerative medicine may be used widely in the future to treat medical conditions such as heart failure, spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease, and even Alzheimer’s disease (Mason and Dunhill, 2008).
Despite the claim of a lack of a clear explanation, several definitions point ta regeneration of body tissues and organs, for instance, Helder et al (2007) define regenerative medicine as “the regeneration and remodeling of tissue in vivo to repair, replace, maintain, or enhance organ function” while Gimble et al (2007) defines it as a process that “combines biomaterials, growth factors, and stem cells to repair failing organs.”
Regenerative medicine is made of cells with the ability to self-renew, known as stem cells. Apart from self-renewing, these cells also multiply along numerous lineage pathways, creating more cells and hence regenerating tissues and organs. As a practical application, Gimble et al (2007) and Helder et al (2007) focus on the use of stem cells taken from adipose to prepare regenerative medicine. Features of these cells that make them appropriate for this purpose include the abundant nature of these cells, they can be harvested with limited harm to the body, and they can differentiate along several cell lineage pathways in a controlled and replicable manner.
However, before the full adoption of regenerative medicine in treating medical conditions and physical injuries, scientists have to overcome several challenges. For instance, the optimal number of cells to be used is established, scientists have to come up with a one-step procedure or use minimal procedures since regenerative medicine involves quite a number of steps (Helder et al, 2007). Other challenges include the development of large-scale manufacturing plants with the proper quality assurance standards, besides, improved methods for the storage of these cells have to be devised (Gimble et al, 2007).
References
Gimble, J. M., Katz A. J., and Bunnell, B. A. (2007). Adipose-Derived Stem Cells for Regenerative Medicine. Circ Res., 100:1249-1260.
Helder , M. N., Knippenberg, M., Klein-Nulend, J., and Wuisman, P. I. J. M. (2007).
Stem Cells from Adipose Tissue Allow Challenging New Concepts for Regenerative Medicine. Tissue Engineering, Volume 00, 1-10.
Mason, C., and Dunhill, P. (2008). A Brief Definition oRegenerativeve Medicine. Regen. Med., 3(1), 1-5.