If cancer is uncontrolled cell growth, can we harness it to regrow entire body parts?
In: Biology
Not really, because cancer is both uncontrolled and the growth of a single cell type.
If we could turn growth on and off at will, we might be able to overcome cancer’s uncontrolled growth. This would be a cure for cancer, which would be monumental in other ways.
Secondly, your arm, for instance, has tons of different cell types in it: muscle cells, skin cells, nerve cells, etc. So the uncontrolled (or controlled, if you solve the first issue) growth of a single cell type won’t regrow an arm, it’ll just grow a chunk of muscle. Getting the nerves to reconnect is also an issue, since that requires “rewiring” the existing nerve cells to send and receive signals from these new nerve cells properly.
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