• Question: could you use stem cells to regrow limbs?

    Asked by syed to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 17 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Anzy Miller

      Anzy Miller answered on 17 Nov 2013:

      Hi Syed,

      Technically, we could create all the cells needed to make limbs from stem cells, but putting it all together into something that looks like an organ, and more importantly WORKS like an limb would be very difficult. In our limbs, all the cells talk to each other so they work together to get the thing to do whatever it needs to do. So you have to make sure you get it right when making the limb so this happens.

      But this doesn’t mean eventually we won’t be able to do this, it will just take quite a long time to do this (I’d guess, at least 50 years). I might be wrong though, we might be able to do it sooner!

    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      One of the big aims of regenerative medicine is to be able to regrow organs and limbs but as Anzy says making a fully functioning limb is really tough. This is because there are so many different cell types that make up a limb, like bone cells, cartilage, tendons, ligaments, muscle, nerves and blood vessels. All these cells need to be in the right place and talking to the right cells so that the limb works properly, this is the big challenge that we have. People have started to try and use 3D printing to get around the problem of the location of the cells and there are a lot of people looking at surface chemistry so that the cells stick where they are put and then grow. Once these technologies are in place it could then be possible to start regrowing limbs, although for the next few years I think advances in robotics and neural interfaces will be the areas of greatest development for limb repair.

      There is also a lot research into animals like axolotls and salamanders, who can regrow limbs that are lost, so that we can understand the genes that these animals have that allow them to do this. The hope is to then find similar genes in humans and see if we can engineer the cells where the limb has been so that they start growing the limb back. This work is at a really early stage but it would be amazing if this is something we could do!

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