AIRPT
Associazione Italiana Ricerche sulla Plasticità Tessutale
Via Parenzo 12
00198 ROMA
Tel. 06 8557096
The Italian Association for Research into Tissue Plasticity
studies the capability, inherent in the tissues of the human body, to change shape
during their life-span or when subjected to external stimuli.
Plasticity enables biological tissues to adapt to new environmental stimuli, and
is a fundamental requirement for survival.
The
Physical World and Plasticity
The plastic processes of retraction and extension are not, however, the exclusive
province of the human body. Rather they belong to space-time as a whole. Thus
plasticity not only represents a characteristic of the energy content of the body-mind,
but permeates the entire physical world.
Plasticity
of the Body-Mind
With regard to the human body, plasticity may be considered an index to measure
well-being and intellectual potential. Depending on the different tissues and
states of matter that it represents on different occasions, it expresses itself
through different values. It can be measured in bits when it defines brain potential
(calculation capability or memory power) or in natural numbers if it identifies
haemodynamic values or cephalometric ratios.
Anti-Ageing
Techniques
At our conferences, plasticity is explained in its different implications that
link it to changes in body shape and to physiological and pathological processes
of the Body-Mind.
Basic
Scientific Models for the Study of Ageing
During
the 1960s, great interest began to develop around the processes of tissue regeneration,
chiefly among researchers of Anglo-Saxon origins.
Studies
were begun on skin rejuvenation products for topical use, in the form of solutions
based on phenol, which is capable of homogenising collagen, reducing melanocytes
and increasing the number of elastic fibres.
In
1968, Linus Pauling, Nobel prize winner for chemistry, coined the term orthomolecular
medicine to indicate a new type of treatment for diseases, using substances already
present in the body such as vitamins.
Tissue
oxidisation, caused by free radicals, is today thought to be one of the major
causes of the ageing and degeneration of body tissues. Research has found that
oxidation of cells causes the continual formation of waste products, such as lipofuscin
(the ageing pigment) that is thought to accumulate in tissue of ectodermal origin
(skin and brain).
Cell
cultivation aims on one hand to determine the causes of various diseases, and
on the other hand to multiply the cellular heritage for repair purposes.
Cultivation
of cartilage cells (chondrocytes) on moulds has made it possible to faithfully
reconstruct the shape of the cartilage of the ear, and another recent achievement
has been the reproduction of heart valves by cultivating fibroblasts on three-dimensional
moulds.
The
ultramicroscopic study of epithelial and collectival tissue cells has made it
possible to verify the ageing processes and the evolutionary phases of cell regeneration
in vitro.
Cell
growth factors make possible the multiplication of cells in culture and at present
are one of the principle areas of research in the neuro-protection field.
Infusion
of Nerve Growth Factor into the brain of experimental animals has shown an increase
in the volume of cholinergic neurons, with consequent improvement of the memory
and learning capacity, and parenteral administration of the gangloside GM1 has
reduced the damage produced on the cerebral cortex and the hyppocampus by retrograde
degeneration of cholinergic neurons.
Antioxidant
therapy, now in use to prevent skin ageing and to treat necrotic lesions, is an
equally important pharmacological strategy to prevent the degeneration of nervous
tissue (which has the same embryonic derivation as the skin).
