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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – Ponce de León dreamed of recapturing the feeling of euphoria experienced when making discoveries in infancy and died having not tasted a drop to quench his youthful thirst. He longed for the restorative powers of the fountain of youth and to quell the monotony of adult experience of unreachable discovery but was unable to realize that mythical potential. In modern science, youth and regeneration are synonymous which is what has stoked the fiery debates surrounding stem cell research.
The debates have garnered even more media attention as of late, given the recent injunction passed by U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruling to temporarily block federal funding of existing lines of embryonic stem cell research. While the ban has been temporarily lifted, the court battle continues, creating a tumultuous and uncertain future for stem cell science. In light of these heated debates and the failure of current stem cell therapies to reach the full potential of regenerative possibilities once imagined, there is a need to change the trajectory of this research and give due notice to some important components that have been largely neglected in the current lines of research.
What are Telocytes?
The concept of regeneration has long driven scientists to study the human body and the potential that our cells possess. When I began to explore the regulatory systems of our internal organs, one cell group remained constant in all organs, especially in those that require repetitive muscle use, including the heart.
This discovery is a cell called telocyte. Used in conjunction with existing stem cell research, these solutions could potentially change the future of modern medicine, particularly in relation to cardiac repair after myocardial infarction like a heart attack.
Telocytes are cells with potential regenerative properties in the field of cardiac renewing and repair. They play a key role in the regulation of the human body various systems and these cells might be the starting point in the development of applications for human regeneration, recovery, and longevity. During our most recent research in Bucharest, we found the presence of telocytes in the human lung structure and pleura, as well as in striated muscle and heart structure (both epicardium and endocardium). Research indicates that these cells could very well be the “missing link” in effective stem cell therapy.
When injected into an organ, exogenous stem cells have the tendency to break apart, reducing their efficacy and ability to multiply. Telocytes might help solve this fundamental problem by acting as guides and corralling the stem cells into one, targeted area with their telopodes. The shortest possible definition for telocytes is “cell with telopodes” This panel of telopodes is a characteristic unique among known cellular prolongations and is what allows telocytes to act as a helper cell to stem cells. There is a big hope that together with stem cells telocytes will improve the therapeutic effects of stem cell treatment in case of myocardial infraction. Notably, many leaders in the scientific community consider Telocytes as viable candidates for future developments of autologous cell-based therapy in heart diseases.
While the term telocytes may be a new one, research has been conducted around interstitial cells for decades. In the 1910’s scientist Ramon y Cajal discovered a particular cell type in the gut, which he named ‘interstitial neurons’. In the early 1970s, electron microscopy (EM) studies showed that indeed a special interstitial cell type corresponding to the cells discovered by Cajal is localized in the gut muscle coat, but it became obvious that they were not neurons. Consequently, they were renamed ‘interstitial cells of Cajal’ (ICC) and considered to be pace-makers for gut motility. For the past 10 years many groups were interested in whether or not ICC or similar cellular entities are present outside the gastrointestinal tract, and indeed, peculiar interstitial cells were found in: upper and lower urinary tracts, blood vessels, pancreas, male and female reproductive tracts, mammary gland, placenta, and, recently, in the heart as well as in the gut.
Significant New Discovery Verified by World Renowned Scientists
During the last decade, new players appeared in the ICC field. In this case it is the perfect case of serendipity – a term coined almost 250 years ago by Horace Walpole, an English novelist, to define making a “fortunate and unexpected discovery by accident or sagacity”. Fascinated by ICC, we began to look for cells located in the pancreas, where Cajal also saw his ‘interstitial neurons’.
The team I’ve been working with in Bucharest extended their studies to other organs including fallopian tubes, placenta, mammary gland, gall bladder, mesentery, pulmonary veins demonstrating the frequency and ubiquity of the cell type that was found. My team and I performed an EM examination as well as staining techniques used by Cajal to label his “interstitial neurons” and the immunohistochemical methods supposed to specifically label the ICC and observed cells with a typical interstitial location and a phenotype more or less similar to that of the ICC. The existence of a new, not yet described cell type became increasingly clear. We called them five years ago “Interstitial Cajal-like Cells”, or ICLC. In fact, there were only a few similarities, not to mention the peculiar morphology of the ICLC, a morphology that is unique among all other interstitial cells. Such cells, now mostly known as ICLC, have been re-branded as telocytes, using the Greek affix telos, meaning goal or fulfillment.
The presence of telocytes in the human body has now been verified by renowned scientists throughout the world including Professor CY Wang, the Head of the Tissue Research Unit at the Beijing Medical Military Academy as well as Professor William Pu of Harvard Medical School, Professor William Taggart in United Kingdom, Professor Daniele Bani in Italy, Professor Sawa Kostin in Germany – to give only a short list of examples.
A New Direction for Stem Cells?
Telocytes could potentially change the future direction of stem cell research and development for years to come, and have a lasting impact on modern medicine in treating a variety of illnesses. Specifically, when used in conjunction with stem cells, the regenerative powers could aid people in surviving long after a heart attack has occurred, significantly increasing life expectancy after such a major infarction.
Bio
Lawrence M Popescu, is Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Director General of the National Institute of Pathology,Bucharest, Romania. He was Postdoctoral Fellow in Leiden, The Netherlands and Fogarty International Fellow, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
He is currently the President of the Romanian Academy of Medical Sciences. At the European level, he has been elected the Vice-President for 2010-2011 and President-Elect for 2012-2014 of the Federation of European Academies of Medicine.
His team scientific focus is currently the study of telocytes.
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