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I Wanna New Thumb

Posted by michael on from the hitchhiking-possible-once-more dept.

joestump98 writes: "It appears that we are taking odd steps towards growing back lost tissue - a story at Yahoo! tells that 'doctors have used a patient's own body cells and a scaffold made of coral to grow back a missing portion of his thumb.' Sounds too cool!"

2 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. Rejection? by BobGregg · · Score: 2

    I thought coral material was alive. Even if it were just skeletal material deposits, I'd think there would be an issue of rejection to be overcome. I'm curious about how they addressed this, and whether the resulting complications would balance against the simplicity of just using the person's own tissues (i.e. a toe).

    1. Re:Rejection? by QuantumFTL · · Score: 3

      The coral is almost certainly dead. Rejection by the body is mostly caused by the immune system's failure to recognize surface proteins on cells from foreign tissue, thus causing an attack. Dead coral is mostly just the minerals, etc, that go into making the structure, and our not very reactive. If we can put plastic or metal into someone, putting coral into them really isn't much different. There may have been one or two things they had to do (sterelize it, possibly apply some kind of coating) but for the most part it's a lot easier than getting the body to accept something that's living.

      Justin

      (warning, I'm a physicist, not a bio major, and although i have friends working on organ rejection, there's still stuff that I wouldn't be aware of)