Cal Strode is a Communications Specialist at CCRM. Before joining CCRM, Cal worked with the UK’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast (ARC NWC) and the UK Research & Innovation (UKRI) 3DBioNet network. He also has five years of public health communications experience, delivering national campaigns with measurable impact in the fields of mental and sexual health. Cal is interested in how effective communications can catalyze social change. His bachelor thesis on the topic won the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA) award for best thesis, allowing him to present his findings at EUPRERA’s congress in Brussels. Outside of work, Cal enjoys surfing and cold-water swimming. Follow Cal on Twitter @CalStrode
If regenerative medicine had an official mascot, it would surely be the axolotl (pronounced ACK-suh-LAH-tuhl). Named after the Aztec god Xolotl, this visually stunning aquatic salamander has been the subject of as many legends as it has studies.
The axolotl looks like it was drawn up in a Pixar studio, but that’s not what has researchers captivated. Far beyond its striking looks, this amphibian has unparalled regenerative capabilities. It can repair and completely regrow limbs and multiple organs including its lungs, heart and eyes. Even a damaged spinal cord is but a minor and temporary inconvenience for the axolotl.
It seemed to me that getting to know the axolotl was in order, so I set out on a deep dive – online of course. The depths of Mexico City’s lake Xochimilco, their only natural habitat in the world, are much too dirty for swimming; the lake has been getting more polluted by the year. I have primary source information (from my partner who grew up in the area) that if I were to swim in it, I’d return home with one more eye, or one less. Which of the two he couldn’t be sure.
Urbanization has seen Mexico City’s population explode, growing from a comparatively modest 3 million inhabitants in 1950 to around 22 million today. To accommodate this growth, lakebeds were drained and built upon. It’s perhaps no surprise then that today, the axolotl is a critically endangered species. For every 60 counted in 1998, researchers could find only one a decade later. Should they disappear from Mexican lakes altogether, a convent of nuns could be their best hope of reintroduction to the wild. Yes, really.
The Sisters of the Sacred Salamander – or The Sisters of Immaculate Health as they’re formally known in the central Mexican town of Patzcuaro – have been busy breeding the axolotl for decades (albeit for use in a traditional cough syrup). Through their endeavours, the Sisters have become world-leading experts in breeding axolotls, leading researchers from as far afield as the UK’s Chester Zoo to form unlikely conservation partnerships with the convent.
Axolotl mural in Mexico City via Wikimedia Commons, painted and photographed by artist Bryan González.
A mascot earns its stripes by serving as a source of encouragement and inspiration when the group it represents faces challenges. To consider whether or not the axolotl deserves to be crowned regenerative medicine’s official mascot, let’s consider a couple of the biggest challenges in the field.
The first is the new paradigm of funding structures needed to ensure health systems can deliver the expensive life-changing innovations that are soon expected to arrive. The second is building a deeper understanding of how regeneration takes place within organisms.
The humble axolotl can’t help us with financing our national health systems, but as any good mascot would, we’re sure it’s cheering us on from the sidelines. Thankfully, Dr. Chih Wei Teng and colleagues from CCRM Australia penned a blog for us earlier last year on the question of how we’ll pay. The National Research Council of Canada has also been on the case.
When it comes to the second challenge, the axolotl has already made a measurable contribution just by existing. Researchers led by scientists in Vienna, Dresden and Heidelberg did the rest, mapping out the entire genome of the axolotl in early 2018 and publishing their findings in Nature. It was an enormous feat; the genome consists of 32 billion base pairs compared to about 3 billion base pairs in human DNA, making it the largest set of genetic instructions ever fully sequenced at the time of the study’s publication.
The group’s analysis found that several genes are specifically expressed in regenerating limbs. Their work lays the foundation for unlocking new insights into the genetic and biochemical mechanisms behind the regeneration of damaged tissues and cells. In a press release, study co-author Sergej Nowoshilow summarized: “We now have the map in our hands to investigate how complicated structures such as legs can be re-grown.” For that, we can give thanks to the axolotl.
The future of the regenerative medicine filed looks bright: one estimate in a recent Nature Medicine editorial puts the number of phase 2 and 3 gene therapy trials underway at over 200. This could mean up to 40 new products being approved for clinical use in the next decade, and up to 1.09 million patients eligible to be treated with them in the next 15 years.
With so many new technologies set to reach the market in our lifetime, telling regenerative medicine’s story in an accessible way will be important. We might well need our mascot as much as it needs the Sisters of the Sacred Salamander.
(Ed: While the axolotl is indeed cute and Cal Strode makes a compelling argument for its suitability as a mascot for the regenerative medicine field, let’s not forget the Canadian contender. Canada’s own Ryan Reynolds is a popular antihero as Deadpool – and arguably a suitable mascot due to his healing and regenerative abilities as a result of an experimental cancer treatment that gives him mutant genes. If the axolotl and Deadpool were to go “toe-to-toe,” Deadpool would squash the sympathetic salamander without a second thought.)
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