Chip Reprograms Cells to Regenerate Damaged Tissue in Mice

Virus are basically a piece of genetic material with some coating.

An expert told recently that EVs are very dangerous stuff.

Two things that come to mind are speed and energy. I can imagine perfect-but-slow, perfect-but-expensive, or perfect-but-exhausting healing being selected against and good-enough-for-reproductive-business-and-fast-and-restful being selected for.

The typical complication in related therapies almost always seems to include the potential for uncontrolled proliferation of the cells, either at the site, or as metastatic cancer.

Evolution doesn't optimize for benefits to the individual. If it did, we'd all regenerate like salamanders.

That any sort of cell therapy or signaling change works at all to improve health is indicative that the standard issue biochemistry in mammals is suboptimal.

The risk from this sort of thing, like all efforts to change cell behavior towards greater tissue maintenance, is cancer. One of the most interesting aspects of the whole field of regenerative medicine is the degree to which cancer hasn't emerged, however. There seems to be considerable leeway for crude methods to improve regeneration to work without large increases in cancer risk.

>It seems like something like this would already happen naturally

it is naturally happening right now as humans with their tech is just a tool of Nature - following George Carlin logic of "planet [Earth]'s goal was plastic packets, so it produced humans who produced the packets, now humans can go" :)

You could say that about any medical procedure.

You could say that about computers... Testris would happen naturally if there were no significant trade offs.

Evolution tends to optimize, but it also gets stuck in local maxima because of its slow linear nature. We should eventually be able to provide vastly superior biological constructs and fixes - once we become proficient at reprogramming at a DNA/RNA level.