Physiological Foundations

The extracellular Matrix is the medium in which the cell lives!

The first cells were formed in the primordial ocean. Single-celled organisms exchanged substances with this boundless ocean practically without any changes occurring in its physical characteristics (electrolytes, minerals, acid-base parameters, temperature, trace elements etc.)

The cells of the human body “bathe” in the extracellular fluid, whose volume is smaller than the cellular volume.

This medium would thus rapidly change, if the intercellular fluid were not connected via the blood circulation to organs which take in nutrients, electrolytes and water, and which dispose of wastes via the urine and stools.

The regulation of the inner medium is mainly the task of the kidney and respiration. In addition, essential components of the extracellular fluid are constantly lost to the outside via the lungs and the skin. Naturally the specialization of cells and organs for specific functions requires integration. This occurs, among other things, through long-range convective transport, by the transmission of humoral information via the circulatory system, and by the transmission of electrical signals by the nervous system. These mechanisms not only insure the necessary supply and removal of various substances, thereby insuring the constancy of the internal medium even under extreme stresses and demands, but also control and regulate functions which promote survival of the organism and the species overall.

All homeodynamic therapies, including chemotherapy in oncology, are primarily therapies of the extracellular matrix, and mainly act only secondarily on the cells themselves. The term “Matrix Therapy” was chosen by the Erlangen working group in 1995. It is intended to underline the fact that every regulative influence on a cell – whether preventative, curative, regenerative or destructive (chemotherapy) – acts primarily on the medium surrounding the cell, i.e. on the extracellular matrix. Either the therapeutic effect occurs in the matrix itself or secondarily, via the matrix, on the cells.

Processes can be observed better by means of high-resolution video microscopy.