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Editor's Corner
Editorial
Jamie Davies, Editor-in-Chief
volume 1 | issue 2
oct/nov/dec 2004Page 35
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Welcome to issue two of Organogenesis! On the following pages, you will find another selection of papers describing ground-breaking work at the interface of developmental biology and organ transplantation and regeneration.
Two of the papers concern the stability of differentiation in the gut and its appendages, and carry important implications for regeneration and tissue engineering. The review by Shen et al. [1] considers the propensity of cells of the gastrointestinal system to transdifferentiate; that is, to taken on the differentiated state characteristic of another organ or part of an organ. As well as being very interesting from the point of view of basic developmental biology, this transdifferentiation offers a great hope to regenerative medicine because it may be possible to use an undamaged organ as a source of cells to replace those in a damaged organ. Pancreas, for example, may contain cells that can be persuaded to build new liver. The original report by Lear et al. challenges the traditional view that islet cells of the pancreas develop only from endodermal precursors and suggests that, at least in culture models, islet cells can differentiate from the mesenchyme as well. Again, the message is that lineage in the gastrointestinal system is not as inflexible as was once thought: future work may uncover the signals that promote ‘unconventional’ differentiation and, therefore, open new paths to regeneration.
Stability of differentiation is also connected, tangentially, with the paper that demonstrates a negative correlation between the evolutionary age of an organ and that organ’s propensity to become cancerous in humans. This correlation may be entirely spurious, or it may indicate some deep-seated instability in the differentiated states of ‘modern’ organs, an instability we may one day be able either to use or to control.
The remaining papers address aspects of transplantation, and both point to techniques that may one day improve clinical outcomes. Rogers and Hammerman report a novel way of stimulating the development and function of transplanted foetal kidneys by treating them, just before transplantation, with vitamin D3. The mechanism by which vitamin D3 works in this system is not yet clear. Indeed, the fact vitamin D3 is more effective than its derivative, 1,25(OH)2D3, which is the active molecule in most systems, suggests that the explanation will not be simple. Nevertheless, from a technical point of view, Rogers and Hammerman’s technique can begin to be useful even before it is understood deeply. The report by Sawada et al. focuses on the largest and most accessible organ of the human body, the skin. The authors describe a transplantation technique that can be used to expand the area of epithelium by culturing it in vivo in a way that encourages it to form a cyst.
I hope you enjoy this issue, and that you will consider Organogenesis for publication of your own research in the general areas of organ development, regeneration, and tissue engineering.
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDF If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.