Regenerative Medicine: from Bench to Bedside, MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
77 Massachusetts Avenue,
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307,

Course Description,
Regenerative medicine involves the repair and regeneration of tissues for therapeutic purposes, such as replacing bone marrow in leukemia, cartilage in osteoarthritis or cells of the heart after a heart attack.

In this course, we will explore basic mechanisms of how cells differentiate into specific tissues in response to a variety of biologic signaling molecules. We will discuss the use of such factors for in vitro tissue production. We will also study the cellular mechanisms involved in the cloning of animals and how Scottish researchers produced the sheep Dolly using the nucleus of a mammary gland cell from an adult sheep. We will read papers describing organ production, such as the in vitro formation of beating heart cells. We will also consider the molecular bases of cellular tissue remodeling to correct these changes. We will discuss how studies of the developmental, cellular and molecular biology of regeneration have led to the discovery of new drugs.