A bold plan to regenerate missing limbs by tweaking the body’s bioelectricity could be realised in the coming year. and his team at Tufts University, Massachusetts, have started experiments to get mice to regrow parts of their paws.
Levin’s team has already found that patterns of electrical activity allow cells to communicate with each other, and control how embryos develop. Earlier this year, the group altered this pattern – which they call the “bioelectric code” – in worms, enabling them to grow heads instead of tails and vice versa.
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Since then, the team has developed a cocktail of chemicals that alter the electrical activity of cells by changing the way charged substances, such as calcium ions, move through them. Preliminary results suggest this brew can boost frogs’ natural ability to regrow severed limbs.
The next step is to do this in mammals – a much more challenging feat since these animals aren’t normally very good at regenerating limbs. Mice and humans might be able to regrow a little piece of a chopped-off finger or toe, but that is pretty much it. Levin’s goal is to regenerate an entire mouse paw – and eventually, human limbs.
The team is now applying its chemical cocktail to mice missing parts of their paws. To do this, Levin has created a silk-based gel that can be impregnated with the cocktail and attached to the end of the damaged limb.
There have been some early signs of regrowth, although the researchers think they will need to tweak either the cocktail or the way they deliver it to get the results they are hoping for. “We’ve started with a mouse digit, but ultimately it will be an entire paw,” says Levin.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Missing limbs regrown”
