26. Repair and Regeneration Flashcards
Why do we need to understand repair?
- normal oral tissue development and function helps us understand abnormal control and disease response
- cells, genes and molecules control response to development, structure and function AND ageing, injury and disease so repair can be a treatment between
What is regenerative medicine?
- to develop novel therapies to repair and regenerate tissues and organs
- which have been damaged by injury, ageing, cancer, disease
Define ‘repair’
restoration of tissue function but with impaired tissue architecture
Define ‘regeneration’
- complete restoration of tissue architecture and function
Problem with regenerative medicine
- full regenerative capacity is lost in humans
- current use of organ transplants and artificial devices is limited to incomplete restoration of original tissue function
Solutions to improve regenerative medicine
- cellular therapy (using exogenous stem/progenitor cells or stimulating own body’s stem cells to repair defective tissue)
- tissue engineering (biomaterials)
- biomedical engineering
- gene therapy
Aims for regenerative medicine
- better clinical outcomes (shorter rehab, better QOL)
- improved health-related cost-effectiveness
List stages of tissue regeneration
- morphallaxis
- epimorphosis
- compensatory regulation
- stem cell-mediated regeneration
What happens in morphallaxis?
- repatterning of existing tissue with little new growth
- for example Hydra (freshwater polyp, 0.5cm, sticks to rocks, filter feeder, asexual reproduction)
- all cells are constantly dividing and migrating and eventually shed at head or foot region - asexual reproduction budding at 2/3 body axis
- morphogen gradients specifying head and foot - each piece of cut hydra will form a small hydra with head and foot
What happens in epimorphosis?
- dedifferentiation of cells at wound site
- formation of undifferentiated cells that redifferentiate to form lost structure
- for example planarian flatworms, amphibian limbs
What happens in compensatory regulation?
- differentiated cells divide
- they maintain their identity and specialised functions
- e.g liver regeneration
Explain how the liver regenerates using compensatory regulation
- sensing of liver damage by increase of gut-derived LPS in blood
- activates Kupffer and stellate cells
- paracrine secretion of mediators stimulates hepatocyte cell proliferation
- size of liver restored 1 week after surgery (mice)
- chronic injury leads to liver fibrosis
What happens in stem cell-mediated regeneration?
- replacement of lost tissue by stem cell activity
e.g - hair growth from follicular stem cells in hair bulge - concept of ‘niche’
- continuous blood cell replacement by haematopoietic stem cells
What are stem cells?
- unspecialised, undifferentiated cells that can self-renew and can differentiate into other cell types
- for development and regeneration
Totipotent stem cells can …
- form all cell types
e.g fertilised eggs
Pluripotent stem cells can form …
- all cell types of the three embryonic germ layers
- e.g embryonic stem cells
Multipotent stem cells can form …
- many cell types
- e.g haematopoietic stem cells or mesenchymal stem cells
Oligopotent stem cells can form ..
- few cell types
- e.g myeloid precursors that form five blood cell types
Quadripotent stem cells form …
4 cell types
e.g mesenchymal progenitor cells (cartilage, bone, stroma, fat)
Unipotent stem cells can form …
one cell type
e.g mast cell precursors
Problem with stem cells in regenerative medicine
- stem cell biology not fully understood
- e.g small number, quiescence, niche, identification, genetic control
What’s a potential use of stem cells that is crucial to dentistry?
for missing teeth