For the First Time, Organ Regenerated Inside a Living Animal 94
ananyo (2519492) writes "Scientists at Edinburgh University have successfully persuaded an organ to regenerate inside an animal. As they report in the journal Development, they have treated, in mice, an organ called the thymus, which is a part of the immune system that runs down in old age. Instead of adding stem cells they have stimulated their animals' thymuses to make more of a protein called FOXN1. This is a transcription factor (a molecular switch that activates genes). The scientists knew from earlier experiments that FOXN1 is important for the embryonic development of the thymus, and speculated that it might also rejuvenate the organ in older animals. They bred a special strain of mice whose FOXN1 production could be stimulated specifically in the thymus by tamoxifen, a drug more familiar as a treatment for breast cancer. In one-year-olds, stimulating FOXN1 production in the thymus caused it to become 2.7 times bigger within a month. In two-year-olds the increase was 2.6 times. Moreover, when the researchers studied the enlarged thymuses microscopically, and compared them with those from untreated control animals of the same ages, they found that the organs' internal structures had reverted to their youthful nature."
Re:Scale this up (Score:4, Informative)
Back in 1986 they regrew the thymus in rats. And actually a guy named Greg Fahy already regrew his own thymus a few years ago .. I dont understand how people can't use Google.
1986 article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm... [nih.gov]
Regrowth of thymus in human: http://online.liebertpub.com/d... [liebertpub.com]
They stopped regrowing the thymus in humans because they don't know if it may have a negative effect to have the thymus in an adult since the thymus normally is completely degraded (evolution may have programmed it to degrade for a reason).