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ALAN RUSSELLA Regenerative Medicine Guy
INTERVIEW BY TIM SMALL ILLUSTRATION BY SILVIO MANCINI  Alan Russell is the founder of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the biggest multidisciplinary center for regenerative medicine in the world. Combining such disciplines as biotechnology, chemistry, tissue engineering (biological, not the stuff you blow your nose in), and stem cell research with cutting-edge technology, Russell’s 250-person strong legion of researchers is creating a whole new approach to medicine itself, an approach that will allow us to cure every single disease in the entire universe, and will enable us to, one day, regenerate every cell of our body. The idea is very simple: if a lizard can grow its tail back, why should we think that humans can't propagate a limb from a stump? Or a damaged muscle? Or cerebral cells? Or maybe whole organs? Why not? Russell foresees a paradigm shift in the medical field that’s kinda like what happened from Newton to Einstein in physics. So, get ready to say goodbye to insulin. And to live until you’re 150. Not bad, right? Vice: How and when did you come up with this whole crazy idea of regenerative medicine? Alan Russell: Truth be told, the idea has been existing from centuries, since Greek mythology. Do you remember Prometheus? As a punishment for offending the Gods, he was sentenced to have his liver eaten by an eagle every day, and his liver would regenerate each night so that the eagle could keep on eating it again the next day, for eternity. It’s interesting how the Greeks chose the liver, since it's one of the most regenerative organs, thug not as much as blood—that regenerates itself at an impressive rate. The idea that the body is capable of regenerating itself has been dreamed for centuries. but it's only during the last 10, 15 years that we can realize what we’ve always dreamed of. Could you explain this to me? Imagine I'm a ten-year-old. It’s quite simple. If you break a bone, you put it in a cast, and the bone heals. This happens because your body already has the power to heal itself. The cast is only an instrument you use to keep the bone still so it can heal on its own. Now we are able to work on new technologies and new instruments that will allow us to put the body in the condition to heal itself. Artificial hearts, artificial livers, artificial lungs are just three of the many things that can interface with the body and send out signals, like “don’t do any more damage, recreate the tissue.” Another way of doing this is to use these new materials that degrade inside the body. Think about stitches, for instance. If you cut yourself and they give you stitches, then you have to get them removed and they leave a scar. But think of stitches made of a material that can degrade inside the wound, all the while telling the surrounding cells, “Don’t leave a scar, produce new tissue.” You would never have a scar again. And the last area we’re actually working on is with cells. We can use cells to make them communicate with other cells, telling them to behave in a specific way that is useful to the patient. Pretty cool. It’s very simple, as I said. Did you know that a salamander, or a newt, can regenerate an amputated limb in a couple of months? Same thing goes for deer and their antlers. They fall every year, and every year they grow back again, very quickly. But how does this work, biologically speaking? When we understand this, we’ll be able to apply it to humans with regenerative medicine. It doesn’t matter whether it’s going to be a material or a stem cell to allows us to do this. Regenerative medicine is an end, not a means to an end. People are living longer but their mental and physical capacities start to rapidly deteriorate at a certain point. And it all costs so much. How can regenerative medicine help with this? If you look at the reasons of this drastic raise of the social cost of health care, you can argue that all we’re doing is spending a huge amount of money at the beginning of the patient’s old age, using incredibly expensive techniques, with a very marginal increase in quality of life and life expectancy. What we’re trying to do, instead, is couple early diagnosis with a new series of treatments that could really alter the course of the disease, if not cure it completely. The result would be a dramatic drop in the social cost of health, and a huge improvement in the quality of life of the patient. My gran suffered from diabetes since... since I was born, really. I remember realizing that diabetes is an incurable disease. If you are diagnosed with diabetes, well, you just have diabetes until you die. That's it. All this sounds pretty obvious now, but it was very shocking for me at the time. Absolutely. You’re totally right. And every year, in the US, 80,000 patients suffer from a finger or even a limb amputation because of it. My gran had her toes amputated. It happens really often. So try and imagine if there was a single injection that could cure diabetes. Even if that injection would cost a million dollars, that would save society—and the patients—an incredible amount of money, [not to mention] avoiding every complication that comes with the disease, and improving life quality in a dramatic way. And this injection might not even cost a million dollars. See all articles by this contributor
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