How Does Regeneration Work?

Fight Aging!

Do you want to live a longer life in good health? Simple practices can make some difference, such as exercise or calorie restriction. But over the long haul all that really matters is progress in medicine: building new classes of therapy to repair and reverse the known root causes of aging. The sooner these treatments arrive, the more lives will be saved. Find out how to help »

Transfusions of adult stem cells have shown promise in human trials, but researchers are still searching for definitive conclusions on how these therapies work. From EurekAlert: "Adult stem cells can be found locally in various tissues and organs, and we have presumed that they are participating in the repair and maintenance of organ functions. The controversial idea is that adult stem cells have the potential for transdifferentiation; in other words, that they are able to transmutate from one type of organ cell to another. ... [Scientists] have discovered by a number of different experimental approaches that mesenchymal stem cells only show a rudimentarily developed potential for transdifferentiation processes. All cases in which functional skeletal muscle cells arose from mesenchymal stem cells were based on the fusion of stem cells with already differentiated muscle cells."

Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/m-tro080405.php