Mini deer antlers have been grown on the foreheads of laboratory mice to test the regenerative potential of some stem cells that in the future could be used in regenerative medicine to repair bones and regrow amputated limbs. The result is published in the journal Science by a Chinese research group led by the Northwestern Polytechnic University of Xi’an city.
The researchers, intent on studying the regenerative mechanisms of mammals, focused on deer which are able to regrow their antlers every year, made of living tissue with blood vessels and nerves wrapped around a rapidly growing bone structure. The key element for their regrowth is a small mass of cells with a high regenerative potential reminiscent of the one (called ‘blastem’) which in amphibians allows the regrowth of amputated limbs. Still in the class of mammals, there is also another animal which maintains a discrete regenerative capacity: it is the mouse, capable of making the toes of its front paws regrow thanks to progenitor cells similar to those of deer’s horns. ‘This suggests the existence of relatively conserved molecular and cellular mechanisms in the only two cases of appendage regeneration in mammals,’ the study authors write.
These mechanisms were partly reconstructed by analyzing the genes turned on in nearly 75,000 deer cells representative of different antlers growth stages. To verify the potential of these deer progenitor cells, the researchers transferred them to the skulls of hairless mice, obtaining the growth of small cartilaginous protuberances within 45 days: the analyzes showed that these mini horns are produced entirely by stem cells of deer transplanted, proving the fact that the researchers have isolated the very cells that are fundamental for regeneration.
Source: Ansa
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