Scientists Regenerate Rat Muscle Tissue

Zothecula writes Muscle lost through traumatic injury, congenital defect, or tumor ablation may soon be regenerated from within. A team of researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center has shown how stem cells in the body of mice and rats can be mobilized to form new muscle in damaged regions. "Working to leverage the body’s own regenerative properties, we designed a muscle-specific scaffolding system that can actively participate in functional tissue regeneration," explains Sang Jin Lee, senior author on the study. This scaffold was implanted in the rats' tibialis anterior muscle (which is found below the knee), serving as a kind of home for the muscle progenitor cells to grow and develop.

Comments

Nerve control

[onix]

That seems to be less than 1/2 of a solution. Nerve ending working in sync to create useful motion would be needed, no?

Re:Nerve control

[i kan reed]

Not necessarily. I'm sure this is still not nuanced enough, and someone with a better knowledge of anatomy is going to come in and correct me, but I seem to recall from middle school biology(yeah that's the level I'm working on here) that striated skeletal muscle strands work cooperatively naturally, without all them needing to be stimulated by nerves independently.

So, naturally you'd need some nerves in order to stimulate the chemical pathways that induce contraction and expansion among the muscle group, but if you only lost some of the muscle it might still work?

I don't know for sure.

Re:Nerve control

[quantumghost]

That seems to be less than 1/2 of a solution. Nerve ending working in sync to create useful motion would be needed, no?

Partially correct. I was going to post saying that this was only half the solution for another reason.

A nerve needs to contact the muscle body which would allow control of the muscle, as a denervated muscle is mostly useless as it will atrophy away.

The other shoe that needs to drop is the fascial layer of the muscle. Without it the muscle is also useless. (Fascia is the tough fiberous out layer of the muscle that provides structural integrity and allows the muscle to function - think tendons. Without fascia a muscle is like a car without a frame - the muscle can contract, but has nothing to pull against). In traumtic injury, muscles can be damaged, but they have a pretty good regenerative ability, the fascia, which is much less cellular, is much tougher to fix....this, in a sense, why hernias are such a problem, its not a defect in the muscle, it's the fascia.

This may however be great for some musculodegenerative diseases like muscular dystrophy, but using the pt's own stem cells would not work...they're inherently defective. If you have a suitable donor, that was disease free, that might be a cure.

Regardless, this is a great accomplishment, hope they can build upon and improve this!

Big deal

[kruach aum]

I've been regenerating my own muscle tissue for years. Don't skip leg day, son

Re:Big deal

[Bengie]

You don't actually gain more muscle cells, you just make your current cells bigger and stronger.

Looks like our problems are over

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey everyone, this is great news. We've just solved the high cost of food protein because we can just get some rat meat.

True, it;s not veal but let me tell you I have seen the film "king rat" and I am inspired!

Step 2; a fork slingshot to catch the pesky buggers!

Re:Looks like our problems are over

[peragrin]

Once we figure out rats we can then move on to pigs which share many traits with humans.

However once we can generate pig muscles then we can make an unlimited supply of bacon.

Now doesn't that sound good.

Re:Looks like our problems are over

[Anonymous Coward]

"However once we can generate pig muscles then we can make an unlimited supply of bacon"

That would require not only building muscle tissue, but fat deposits as well.
Without the fat, it really wouldn't be bacon now would it?
However, you could make "Canadian bacon" which is wet cured Pork Tenderloin

sez The Bubonic Plague:

[Mister Liberty]

"thanks for giving me Mobile."

It used to be bigger...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, ya, I need my junk "regenerated", I seem to have lost a foot of muscle tissue due to a birth defect.

Pitch that to a funding board and you will be swimming in money.

My dog...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wants to know if this technology can be used to regenerate his testicles.

Hooray for Greg

[Anonymous Coward]

Gregory House will be pleased.

Big deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Same as I was thinking, you regenerate muscle by pushing iron. This is probably good news if you're unable to lift weights entirely.

Mmmmmm!

[Frosty Piss]

Scientists Regenerate Rat Muscle Tissue

Dinner is served.

Post heart attack damage

[DigiShaman]

Being that the heart is it's own type of muscle, has it been confirmed if this would help regrow dead heart tissue from a heart attack damage?

Re:Post heart attack damage

[Howler]

It seems that there is definitely a chance of something like this working on damaged heart tissue. I posted a link to Extracelluar Matrix regeneration being researched at the University of Pittsburgh. Here is a video.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/medicines-cutting-edge-re-growing-organs/

Re:Post heart attack damage

[Anonymous Coward]

The heart is also an organ with complex functions
I'm sure parts of the heart such as valves could be replicated, but the entire heart?
Not in our lifetime.

Similar to Extracelluar Matrix

[Howler]

Interesting, but seems very similar to Extracelluar Matrix researched at the University of Pittsburgh (http://www.mirm.pitt.edu/badylak/)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/health/research/human-muscle-regenerated-with-animal-help.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Definitely some great progress being made in this field of study, and I for one, am glad of it.

Body Electric

[Anonymous Coward]

Robert O Becker was doing better in the 70s, had partial limb regeneration (including nerves) in rats with a small current generated by a resistor with one platinum and one silver lead. As this study shows plainly, the field of medicine is still limiting itself to acting only at the chemical and mechanical level, not the electomagnetic or quantum level (although there are treatments - they are ignored as impossible because they are neither chemical or mechanical - see the catch here?). If you are using a protein to influence the electrical potential of the cells, why not stimulate directly?

We were regenerating rats limbs in 1980

[Anonymous Coward]

https://archive.org/stream/omni-magazine-1980-11/OMNI_1980_11#page/n33/mode/2up

In the article above they mention they thought we would have human limbs regenerated (without stem cells) in 20 years. Over 30 years later we don't hear anything about using electricity or magnetism is medical research.

I didn't even know Scientists HAD rat muscles!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I guess that explains the hunch...

Been done better

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12016344
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v235/n5333/abs/235109a0.html

Dr Robert O Becker did research from the 70s-2008 on rats that began to regrow bones, nerves, muscle and skin similar to the regeneration of salamanders (who can regrow 1/2 of their brain, eye lens, ect.) simply through a tiny negative current which mimicked the secondary nervous system present in salamanders. He found that a secondary negatively charged stimulation of the cells caused the bodies cells to revert to stem cells, divide, and begin re-differentiating into the missing area. Think about it, what was the big breakthrough for dolly the sheep: a spark.

What these researchers are doing is rather than use the bodies natural ability to regenerate directly they are using the only means approved by the medical establishment: mechanical removal/implantation and chemical stimulation.

Brain

[Taco Cowboy]

Brain is the most wonderful organ there is

If they can regenerate brain cells using the stem cells, a lot of brain-related illnesses / injuries might be cured - from ALS to Alzheimer Disease to people suffering from brain hemorrhages / tumors / cancers to diseases such as Japanese Encephalitis which affected the brain, and so on

Who knows? They might even find ways to cure stupidity

RATS

[HeLLFiRe1151]

They always get the good stuff first.

House episode?

[griffo]

I smell a House episode where he finally is cured of his Vicodin addiction by elimination of the pain of the missing leg muscle...