Regenerative Therapy

What is regenerative therapy?

Regenerative medicine treatment involves culturing the necessary materials (cells) for tissue repair outside the body and transplanting them into the body. Additionally, it consists of culturing insufficient immune cells outside the body and then transplanting them back into the body. It is a treatment method that can effectively repair aging and damaged tissues and is expected to maximize healthy life expectancy.

Transplanted stem cells have two important properties:

・Repairs damaged parts first ・Can self-renew infinitely

Why does regenerative therapy work?

Homing effect and paracrine effect are the functions of stem cells in regenerative therapy.

【Homing effect】refers to the characteristic of stem cells to automatically gather towards inflammation or damaged tissues caused by disease or trauma. Stem cells gathered in damaged tissues will differentiate at that location.

【Paracrine effect】refers to the impact that stem cells secrete growth factors that promote stem cell proliferation and differentiation, helping to repair damaged areas.

This is not an endocrine effect in which cell secretions act on distant cells through the blood circulation; rather, it is a paracrine effect in which cell secretions directly act on neighboring cells.

Regenerative therapy primarily aims to repair damaged tissues and organs by harnessing the two key effects of stem cells.

Advantages of Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Regenerative Therapy

Adipose-derived stem cells can differentiate into various types of tissue cells and other stem cells through a process of self-differentiation. The various growth factors released during self-replication stimulate the surrounding undifferentiated stem cells to replicate themselves, playing a role in ensuring the stability of tissues:

◆ Stem cells have high repair ability

◆ Adipose tissue memory is found in a large number of stem cells

◆ Almost painless surgery, large number of cells can be collected

◆ No ethical issues

◆ No need for manual DNA manipulation

◆ Almost no rejection reaction

◆ Zero risk of cancer

※Japan has reported cases of bone marrow stem cell cancer