This is a food and nutrition blog, but sometimes we can’t help ourselves.
Rodgers and colleagues identified a critical signal in blood that alerted stem cells: an enzyme called Hepatocyte Growth Factor Activator (HGFA). In normal conditions, HGFA is abundant in the blood but inactive. Injury activates HGFA, so HGFA signaling can alert stem cells to be ready to heal.
Activation typically occurs after an injury, but what if HGFA was used to alert stem cells before an injury occurs? To find out, they injected active HGFA into mice that received either a muscle or skin injury a couple of days later. The mice healed faster, began running on their wheels sooner and even regrew their fur better than mice that did not receive the HGFA booster.
This could lead to improvement in regenerative medicine techniques.
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Source: Alerting stem cells to hurry up and heal | EurekAlert! Science News
UNLEASH YOUR HEALING POWER 