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A question of regeneration

November 2012

  • Nina Bertok

American-born molecular medicine expert Nadia Rosenthal will be among a number of professional, medical, scientific and industry leaders attending the business events taking place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre over 2013 and 2014. Involved in securing the International Conference on Systems Biology (ICSB 2014), Professor Rosenthal spoke to The Melbourne Review about her research, which focuses on developmental genetics of heart and skeletal muscles, the molecular biology of ageing and the role of growth factors and stem cells in tissue regeneration.

“Regenerative medicine is still a fairly new way of focusing on health and it’s more about prevention rather than waiting for the problem – a disease – to occur and then having to treat it afterwards,” Professor Rosenthal explains. “It’s basically about looking at medicine from a different point of view. The question we are asking is ‘why don’t humans regenerate as well as some other species?’ We’ve actually gone out and looked at other animals in the animal kingdom to try and figure this out. We’ve found that it’s an obvious fact that there are some organisms that can regenerate extraordinarily well – like the starfish, for example. The starfish can actually grow back limbs, which is something we’re clearly not capable of doing – so, why is that?”

Professor Rosenthal claims that asking such questions and continuing with the research is becoming particularly important given that we have a major social crisis approaching. Faced with an increasingly aging community – the so-called Baby Boomer generation – Australia is set to experience somewhat of a crisis in its health care unless we figure out solutions to address regenerative diseases that plague ageing humans.

“This field of research is not yet something that Australia is necessarily particularly known for, however,” Professor Rosenthal points out. “It isn’t an area that is very well represented in Australia just yet, which is a big reason why we are so very excited that this conference will be held in this part of the world, in Melbourne. There are many different questions we can ask about this topic, in terms of basic science anyway, but I think the most important question is how would our healthcare system be affected if humans were able to increase our ability to regenerate on our own? What would happen? They may seem like pretty abstract questions at the moment but a lot of them are relevant in terms of the ways that medicine will come to be practiced in the next century.”

Professor Rosenthal adds that the issue is not necessarily about finding ways for humans to live ‘forever’, but rather about keeping our species healthy, functional and active for as long as it is possible. A complete reversal in ageing is highly unlikely at this stage, she claims.

“But we would be likely to be able to make changes in our ability to increase the regenerative process in some tissues where it’s been proven that regeneration is possible. We don’t believe that stem cells can fix the entire problem, but they are very good at doing those things that they can do. At this point in time, we’re understanding more and more about what this is exactly. All the mysteries about stem cells are being unravelled now and I think this will present some major surprises as we continue our research. I don’t know whether we will ever be able to explain the whole of the natural world, at least not in our lifetime, but at the same time, I think just the amount of progress that we have made in the last century alone, is extremely exciting and something to be positive about.”

 

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