When cells are injured, they can "vomit" their insides out to help them heal faster, according to a new study. While effective, the process could also be implicated in diseases like cancer.

The discovery was made while scientists were investigating a recently discovered cellular process called paligenosis, where mature cells respond to injury by reverting to a younger-seeming progenitor state, similar to a stem cell.

The researchers found that rather than cleaning house slowly, injured cells could quickly jettison waste in a process the team called "cathartocytosis," which may help them achieve a stem cell-like state sooner.

"After an injury, the cell's job is to repair that injury. But the cell's mature cellular machinery for doing its normal job gets in the way," says first author Jeffrey W. Brown, gastroenterologist at Washington University in St. Louis.

"So, this cellular cleanse is a quick way of getting rid of that machinery so it can rapidly become a small, primitive cell capable of proliferating and repairing the injury. We identified this process in the gastrointestinal tract, but we suspect it is relevant in other tissues as well."