How bioelectricity could regrow limbs and organs, with Michael Levin (Ep. 112)

In the near future, birth defects, traumatic injuries, limb loss and perhaps even cancer could be cured through bioelectricity—electrical signals that communicate to our cells how to rebuild themselves. This innovative idea has been tested on flatworms and frogs by biologist Michael Levin, whose research investigates how bioelectricity provides the blueprint for how our bodies are built—and how it could be the future of regenerative medicine.

Levin is a professor of biology at Tufts University and director of the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology.

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00:00 Unpacking ESG at Chicago Booth
00:50 Introduction
03:05 The question is how?
03:29 We have this assumption that our cells are mindless, that they’re hardwired to only do a limited set of things, but Levin isn’t so sure.
04:30 Levin thinks he may have found the answers to those questions, bioelectricity.
04:45 What if we could use that electricity to train cells?
05:35 Explain to me the concept of bioelectricity.
07:34 So you might be wondering, what does bioelectricity have to do with regenerative medicine?
08:22 How do the cells have these memories, if that’s the right word?
09:55 Levin thinks bioelectricity is the architect building the blueprint, so to speak.
10:36 As you talk about this, it’s almost like the cells are like a hardware and the electrical patterns are almost the software. Is that a fair analogy?
12:10 You speak about this very definitively, but there are skeptics. Is that right?
14:23 Break start: ESG Metrics
15:18 Break Ends: I guess when you talk about this, it comes down to one of your early discoveries with a flatworm called planaria.
17:16 How do they do this? Well, you guessed it, bioelectricity.
19:26 If bioelectricity could change the architecture of a worm, could it do the same thing for humans?
22:26 Okay. And then I guess the question would be it’s not just limb regrowth, but it actually could end up being like you said, organs, even the brain. And so as you started thinking about the possibilities with some type of a damage, do you envision a period where we’re going to be able to say, “He’s got brain damage, but it will grow back?”
22:59 And so then I guess if we could regenerate some of these things then when you think of treatments for illness and using bioelectricity, has that played its way into this, IE, for cancer treatments, for example?
26:38 Where, if anywhere, do different levels of potential ethics come into play on this? And what do you think about in relation to any of these things?
27:44 Exit