Shape of things to comeDARPA funds Phase 2 of human limb regeneration study
When you cut off a salamander’s leg, a blastema, or regeneration bud, appears at the stump and then grows into a new leg with muscles, nerves, etc. all complete; DARPA wants to see whether the same can be dome for human limbs
Massachusetts-based Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) said that a WPI-spawned company CellThera has signed a $570,000 agreement with DARPA to develop ways of “regenerating” human body tissues cut, shot or blown off in combat. The new biotech therapies would employ the same methods used by newts in growing replacement limbs. CellThera is expected to work with the university’s bioengineering department in delivering Phase II of DARPA’s “restorative injury repair” program.
The Defense Science Office said:
The vision is to fully restore the function of complex tissue (muscle, nerves, skin, etc) after traumatic injury on the battlefield… with true “wound healing” by regeneration of fully differentiated, functional tissue.
The program will achieve its goals by… processes of morphogenesis leading to anatomic and functional restoration [which] will culminate in the restoration of a functional multi-tissue structure in a mammal.
Under Phase I, CellThera and WPI bioengineers “succeeded in reprogramming mouse and human skin cells to act more like stem cells, able to form the early structures needed to begin the process of re-growing lost tissues” — a process described by DARPA as “generating a blastema in an otherwise non-regenerating animal.”
A blastema (also known as “regeneration bud”) is a clump of special progenitor cells which appears at injury sites in creatures naturally able to regenerate themselves, such as newts or salamanders. When you cut off a salamander’s leg, for instance, a blastema appears at the stump and then grows into a new leg with muscles, nerves, etc. all complete.
Lewis Page writes that it seems that the Massachusetts researchers have already produced basic regeneration buds, potentially capable of growing into new working body parts - at least for mice. “We are very pleased to be moving into the next phase of this work,” said Raymond Page, WPI biotech professor.
DARPA never puts all its eggs in one basket. The agency has other programs under funding aiming to help heal wounded soldiers. One such program aims to develop a rocketfuelled, steam-powered cybernetic arm. Another program looks at spraycan wound-spackle.
