Regeneration of lung over 36 hours

As promising as stem cells are for regenerating damaged tissues, they are not without their problems in culturing and transferring them.  In this piece, Italian and British bioengineers show how, in animal studies, micro RNAs—short sequences of RNA, fished out of the more than 600 variations in living cells—were loaded into viral vectors and injected into pig hearts.  Supposedly, this made injured cells “younger,” but apparently, overdosing caused several animals to die suddenly, weeks after the treatment from over grown tissue. MORE

Image Credit:  Brandon Guenthart/Columbia Engineering.