MDI Science Café – Regenerative Medicine and the End of Aging

What lies behind the remarkable potential of the human body to rebuild itself and why aren’t we better at it? Our imaginations have been captivated by the prospect of stem cells in our adult bodies, set aside earlier in gestation, which might be coerced into regenerative service in later life, augmenting the body’s own repair processes that decline as we grow older. The limited restorative capacity of some tissues has also been attributed to persistent inflammation with increasing age. Our approach has been to tinker with immune mechanisms at work in the mammalian stem cell response to damage, disease and aging, compared to other highly regenerative animals. The results support the feasibility of intervening with our own incomplete response to injury or disease, to reduce the impediments to effective regeneration and provide new targets for clinical intervention.