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Regenerative medicine can rejuvenate healthcare

Self-regeneration designed to harness the body’s inherent power to heal itself is already improving lives and changing medical practices in many parts of the world.


regenerative medicine

At 120,000 patients and counting, the U.S. organ transplant wait list’s continued lengthening is cause for concern in the medical community. With 22 wait list members dying each day, the lack of suitable replacement organs and healthy donors is readily apparent.

That’s why viable alternatives for failing organs — including regenerative medicine — are getting such a long look within the healthcare industry. Supporting the human body’s innate power and desire to self-heal offers new treatment options in multiple areas of tissue and organ replacement.

Stem cells and scaffolding are two such options for growing new organs and tissues; some are even treating damaged parts internally through in-vivo and in-situ means to decrease the likelihood of bodies rejecting the new additions. Self-regeneration designed to harness the body’s inherent power to heal itself is already improving lives and changing medical practices in many parts of the world.

How Regeneration Continues to Evolve
Regenerative medicine is still in the Betamax vs VHS stage of its development. There are multiple opinions about what constitutes regenerative medicine and which technologies should be adopted as routine, with two particular options — standardization and purification — standing out above the rest.

As we move from research to application, we will establish industry standards that allow us to better define, measure, and replicate the regeneration process. As in every therapy, the move from the lab to the clinic requires consistent protocols, indications, requirements, and outcomes.

Once those norms are established, regenerative science should yield reliable outcomes without undue intervention. For example, when the human body undergoes physiological self-regeneration, it will restore the tissue or organ at a more subdued pace. For instance, accelerating the process by adding cellular molecules can hasten regeneration, leaving the results not as pure or organic as full self-regeneration.

Injecting those variables into your regenerative process can lead to a streamlined, advantageous strategy for healthcare practitioners. Here are three of regenerative medicine’s most prominent benefits:

It keeps costs down
Helping the body heal is one thing, but doing it at a decreased cost to both the patient and the physician is a bonus. If the body is able to replace its own skin, the procedures used to obtain skin from another source won’t be needed. Additionally, an added therapy like introducing exogenous tissue or cells to support attachment and revascularization will also be unnecessary.

It improves the quality of life
Regenerative medicine does more than solve a medical problem; it restores the human body to its full functioning capacity. To go back to the skin graft example, self-regenerated skin looks and feels better than grafted skin. A self-regenerated organ will require little to no anti-rejection medication.

We can also move more quickly from managing illness and injury symptoms to curing underlying conditions. Imagine being able to target degenerative diseases like ALS that impair mobility and dramatically reduce a person’s quality of life. If conditions that previously left permanent damage to limbs, organs, nerves, and muscles can be reversed, the patient’s body will be stronger and healthier.

A doctor’s role shifts
With regenerative medicine, the patient is at the center of the healing process, which aligns nicely with trends in patient-centered care. Regeneration focuses less on fighting a disease and minimizing symptoms and more on holistically restoring a patient’s health.

With that in mind, a doctor’s role will shift from an authoritarian to a facilitator of the body’s self-healing power. Instead of prescribing drugs to halt a disease’s progression, doctors will become medical advisers who understand how the body can self-restore when facing specific conditions.

Regenerative medicine has the potential to transform healthcare as we know it. We will be less dependent on drugs and invasive procedures as we tap into the human body’s ability to heal on its own. We may need other resources to support this process, but self-regeneration will lead the way.

Photo: chombosan, Getty Images


Kevin Xu

Kevin Xu is the CEO of MEBO International, a California- and Beijing-based intellectual property management company specializing in applied health systems. He also leads Skingenix, which specializes in skin organ regeneration and the research and development of botanical drug products. Kevin is co-founder of the Human Heritage Project.

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