Rome, 2 July 2024 (Agenbio) – Small amounts of heat generated by gold nanoprisms inserted into tissues, following infrared illumination, can promote the process of cellular regeneration, increasing its efficiency and opening up innovative perspectives in the field of regenerative medicine. This is the discovery made by a research group from the Cnr-Isasi of Pozzuoli, in collaboration with the Instituto de Nanociencia y Materiales de Aragón, published in Advanced Functional Materials. «One of the objectives of regenerative medicine is the possibility of reactivating stem cells in injured tissue and promoting the processes that lead to tissue regeneration rather than repair, which rarely manages to restore the morphology and functionality of the tissue existing before the injury», explains Claudia Tortiglione, researcher from the Cnr-Isasi who coordinated the Italian group. While the human body can regenerate, at the adult stage, only part of some organs – such as skin, liver – in the animal world there are invertebrate organisms, such as hydra and planaria, in which the potential for tissue regeneration is maximum. And it is precisely on specimens of Hydra vulgaris that the team has concentrated its studies, demonstrating how treatment with nanoheaters, i.e. nanomaterials that produce heat when photostimulated, increases the speed of regeneration of the head, reproductive capacity and the rate of proliferation of the animal’s stem cells. The study outlines the molecular mechanisms underlying the increased regeneration efficiency, identifying the key genes of development and the genes involved in the response to thermal stress that are reactivated earlier than normal thanks to the illumination of the nanoprisms. (Agenbio) Etr 9:00
