Lessons for Adult Fingertip Regeneration: Glimpses From Basic Research

Understanding the mechanisms involved in limb and finger regeneration holds promise for improving current treatment therapies. Recent animal studies have improved our understanding of the limb regeneration process markedly. Improved sophistication in experimentation has allowed results that partly reveal the cells of origin in fingertip regeneration in mouse models, which implicates a tissue-resident progenitor cell population. The impressive regeneration of amputated salamander limbs has been shown to work through an evolutionarily divergent mechanism and may not be open to direct translational approaches in mammals. In addition, researchers are beginning to understand the complexity of the interrelated mechanisms of axis determinants in chick embryo limb development. In this article, we review lessons to be learned from these divergent experiments, to understand fingertip regeneration in humans.