Transcript for Regeneration of cells - CBS Cutting Edge

Good afternoon, Hobby Town USA, Lee speaking.

Three years ago Lee Spievak sliced off the tip of his finger in the propellor of a Hobby Shop airplane.

I was behind the wing, and I went like this. What happened next propelled him into the future of medicine.

Spievak's brother Alan, a research scientist sent him this special powder and told him to sprinkle it on the wound.

And I powdered it on until it was covered

To his astonishment every bit of his fingertip grew back.

Your finger grew back—flesh,

blood, vessels and nails.

Four weeks. In four weeks. Right.

Is this essentially what regrew Mr. Spievak's finger?

Yes, it is. We took this, turned it into a powdered form

Dr. Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh says

that powder, a substance made from pig bladders, called extra cellulor matrix

holds some of the secrets behind the emerging new science

of regenerative medicine.

It tells the body, "Start that process of tissue regrowth."

Badylak, the lead researcher at Pittsburgh's McGowan Istitute for Regenerative Medicine,

is one of the many scientists who now believe every tissue

in the body has cells which are capable of regeneration.

All scientists have to do is find enough of those cells and direct them to grow

Somehow the matrix summons the cells and tells them what to do.

It first gets them to the site where they need to be

But then it helps instruct them in terms of where they need to go

How they need to differentiate

Should I become a blood vessel? Should I become a nerve, a muscle cell whatever…

If this helps Mr. Spievak's finger regrow

Could you grow a whole limb?

In theory.

Here you see an engineered blood vessel,

But there are advances in the science of regeneration that already go beyond theory.

You can actually see the vessel feeding

In this lab at Wake Forest University, a lab he calls a medical factory

Dr. Anthony Atala is growing body parts

This is a heart valve, an engineered heart valve;

Atala and his team have built from the cell level up

eighteen different types of tissue so far including muscle tissue

whole organs and the pusling heart valve of a sheep.

And is it growing? Absolutely, these cells are continuing to form new heart valve tissue

When people ask me, "What do you do?"

We grow tissues and organs

You really are making body parts

We are making body parts that we can implant right back into patients

Dr. Atala one of the pioneers in regenerative medicine

also believe every type of tissue has cells

ready to regenerate if only researchers

can prod them into action.

Sometimes that prodding looks like science-fiction.

You are using heart cells in an ink-jet printer. Yes

What's emerging from this printer is the heart of a mouse

Mouse heart cells go into the ink cartridge

and are then sprayed down in a mouse heart pattern layer by layer

Dr. Atala believes it's a matter of time before someone grows a human heart.

The cells have all the gentic information necessary to make new tissue.

That's what you are programmed to do.

So your heart cell is programmed to make more heart tissue.

Your bladder cells are programmed to make more bladder cells.

Atala's work with human bladder cells had pushed regenerative medicine to a transformational breakthrough.

In this clinical trial at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia

Dr. Patrick Shenot is performing a bladder transplant

With an organ built from the patients own cells.

In a process developed by Dr. Atala

the cells were grown in a lab and then seeded on this bladder shaped scaffold.

Eight weeks later the scaffold now infused

with millions of bladder cells

is transplanted into the patient

When it dissolves, Dr Shenot says, what's left

will be a functioning new organ.

The cells will differentiate into the two major cells

in the bladder wall: the muscle cells and the lining cells.

They know to do that themselves? They do.

Are you thinking this is the future?

It's very much the future, but it's today.

We're doing this today.

Today one of the biggest believers in regeneration is the United States military.

which is especially interested in the matrix that grew back Lee Spievak's finger.

The army, working in conjunction with the Universoty of Pittsburgh

is about to use that matrix on the

amputated fingers of soldiers home from the war.

Can we make skin? Can we make bone? Dr. Steven Wolf

at the Army Institute of Surgical Research says

the military has invested tens of millions of dollars

in regeneration hoping to regrow limbs

lost muscle, burnt skin

You see these casualties coming back and it's hard

to ignore that this guy's missing half his skin

this guy's missing his leg.

You start asking the question, "Is there somebody out there

who may have some technology that can do this for us?"

You mean "regrow the tissue"? The answer is "Maybe".

At the Burn Unit here at the Brook Army Medical Center

the very idea of regeneration brings a glimmer of hope.

This arm burnt off all the skin and muscle.

Army staff sargeant Robert Henline was the only survivor

of an IED attack on his Humvee north of Baghdad.

But what do you make of the fact that the army is so heavily invested in that technology?

It's a great idea. If you can come up with something that is less painful

and that heal it with natural growth without the scaring on it.

That's definitely something I'd check into.

The race to check into regeneration has gone global.

This machine being tested in Germany

sprays a patient's own cells onto a burn.

signaling the skin not to form scar

but to regrow.

You could fashion this into tube like this.

In a clinical trial in Argentina

Dr. Badylak is about to implant matrix material

shaped like an oesophagus into patients with throat cancer

You expect the body to regrow a piece of its oesophagus

We fullly expect this material will be degraded

and cause the body to reform normal oesophagial tissue.

And at this clinical trial at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

patient Mary Beth Babo is getting her own adult stem cells injected into her heart.

The hope is to grow new arteries.

Her surgeon is Dr. Jun Lee.

It is actually, if you will, what we would consider the Holy Grael of our field

for coronary artery disease

The Holy Grael because a patient who can regrow a blocked artery

May never need surgery

People don't have to go through that

That's the good way to go

if it works.

Corporate America already believes regeneration will work.

Investment capital has been pouring in

to commercialize and mass produce custom-made body parts.

We are actually building a very real business

around a very real and compelling patient need.

Dr. Steven Nichtberger is the CEO of the Tengion Cooperation.

which has bought the licence, built the factory

and is already manufacturing the bladders

developed at Wake Forest University we told you about earlier.

Tangeon believes regeneration will soon

revolutionize transplant medicine

Transplant patients instead of waiting years

for a donated organ will ship cells off to

to a lab, wait a few weeks and grow their own.

I look at the patients who are on wait the list for transplants

I look at the opportunity we have to build bladders,

to build vessels, to build kidneys

In regenerative medicine I think

it is similar to the semi-conductor industry of the 1980s.

You don't know where it is going to go. But you know it's big.

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