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Grow Your Own Replacement Bones
Tim writes "New Scientist reports on a German man who had a complete jaw transplant, after having his cancerous jawbone removed nine years ago. The twist? This jawbone was grown on his shoulder, using a titanium mold, bone marrow, and recombinant bone morphogenic protein." There's also a BBC story.
Gentlemen, start your erection jokes!
Go! Go! Go!
Still, the amount of pain associated with getting broken bones means that I doubt there'll be anyone willing to abuse this system!
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
I've always wanted 20 or 30 more vertebrae. And finally, some quasi-femurs and quasi-patellas for my new 2-jointed legs.
Hmmm. Where to attach the second set of arms?
of jawbone shoulder guy ending up in the next Dr. Evil henchman?
As creepy as this may be for those of us fortunate enough to still have all original parts, it's life-changing or even life-saving if you've lost a section of your skeleton (like this dude) for some reason.
Profoundly cool work.
--
I always wanted an iPod how about you?
They didn't explain why they would have to go back later and remove the titanium scaffold. People have titanium hips, vertabrae, skull plates, and teeth--how come those don't have to be removed?
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Just to show you how some people can never be pleased, the guy complains to his doctor that because he has no teeth he has to cut it into such small pieces that by the time he gets to the end of the steak, it's cold.
Reminds me of the story that was related to me the other night by someone on IRC. They knew someone whose kids found $200K in a bag and was eventually given control of the money since no one claimed it.
The person spent the money on a house and 2 Jeeps and then later complained that they'd wish they could get a break in life.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Just wait till the piercing/body modification crowd catches wind of this. I imagine tusks, horns, antlers, fangs, claws... The possibilities are endless.
Unknown host pong.
I'd probably complain, something like, "damn, this really bites"...
Sigs cause cancer.
Groaners all, and since everybody wants one, let's get them on the floor:
Now, "I have a bone" to pick with you has a whole new meaning!
Hey, is that a jawbone growing out of your shoulder or are you just happy to see me?
Great - I hear Johnson grew another mouth. Now I'll be getting it in both ears.
I, for one, welcome our shoulder jawbone overlords.
OK, now in seriousness, I think this is a great achievement. Flash forward 10-12 years, and imagine what this could do for other organs. Regrow a finger or a hand for amputees maybe? Suppose we get to work on other organs, such as the heart? Old guy in his 60's can just have new organs regrown to extend his healthy life expectancy to 150 years?
Of course, there's the whole "stem cell and cloning" issues that might come to play when we're talking about organs and not bones, but still, this is a very exciting first step. Congrats to the doctor and patient.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
of why stem cell research needs further capitalization. We are scratching the surface of what stem cells can really do for us! Hopefully Bush will read this article and wake up. Science and technology are the only initiatives (right now) that will push mankind forward.
*oh the horrors*
Why is Bush and his administration against stem cell research again ???
Wouldn't the vast majority of americans want to have this technology available to them ?
Need a liver transplant? No problem, here is one we already made for you. Lung? Spleen? No problem. And now, we apparently have the technology to make the body grow bones of any shape we like and to surgically put those back in the body. That's unbelievably cool.
And, because all of these things are genetically identical to the recipient of the transplant, there is no kind of rejection problem at all.
I don't think it'll be that far down the road before "transplants" are a thing of the past. All organ/tissue replacement will be made for an individual.
-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."
Does this mean I should stop harvesting body parts off of hookers?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I do not understand why we can't grow teeth. Wouldn't that be a great benefit?
Grab some DNA from an existing tooth, off to the farm. Good as new b/c they *are* new.
-b
Is he a greeter at Walmart? Cashier at a Burger King? Clown at kids parties?
I just can't see him saying, "Oooo ahhh iiiieess iiii ahhhh?" (Do you want fries with that?)
Yes. I'm going to hell.
I mean seriously. As cool as this is, who wants to have a jaw on their shoulder? If you had a clone, you could put the jaw on his shoulder.
No fuss, no muss.
There are 01 types of people in this world. Those that understand binary, and me.
One might even say "jaw-droppingly cool". Because this is just that cool.
John
I'm surprised that I don't get spam about this topic.
From start to end, the bone-replacement procedure took four weeks.
If muscles can be kept from atrophying in that amount of time, you could probably replace long bones like those found in arms and legs.
That'd be cool...
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
... but man, talk about a chip on your shoulder!
Ligand binding to its receptor induces the formation of a complex in which the Type II BMP receptor phosphorylates and activates the Type I BMP receptor.
That sounds so made up.
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
The circus!
There's a whole lot of ethical issues surrounding such an attempt. You know -- things like "owning" another person, cruel treatment, slavery, exploitation, defining what constitutes a legal person; stuff like that.
That's why there are bans on human cloning, because society hasn't actually resolved what we would feel comfortable saying we're allowed to do to the meat-socks we would grow.
Growing from scratch is both an amazing accomplishment and, to an extent, lessens some of the sticky issues surrounding the whole thing.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Sounds like there's hope for Darth Malak after all!
Doctors grow new jaw in man's back.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
In a few weeks I am having a spinal fusion surgery to repair my back. My L3 vertebrae is broken completely in two and there is a half inch gap between my spine.
I was given the choice of having bone matter placed in me from a dead person or using my own bone marrow. Well duh! Which choice did I take?
They are going to put two titanium tubes drilled with many small holes in between the two vertebrae then fill them with a mixture of my bone marrow and this BMP material or something very much like it. The mixture will spawn new bone growth and cause the two vertebrae to grow (or fuse) into one large vertebrae. Titanium rods and screws will hold it all together while it grows, which could take anywhere from one year to two years.
This is from an injury that occurred about 37 years ago and degenerated over time from a fracture to the point of total failure of the bone. I'm told that it's a GOOD thing that it just now is coming to light because of these new procedures, otherwise had they found it when I was a child, spinal surgical procedures in those days were barbaric and had a low success rate. They say this new method has better than a 95% success rate, with the 5 percent failure due to people not doing as told afterwards.
I agree completely that stem cell research must not be restricted, the potential benefits are simply ming-boggling. But the Associated Press article I read earlier today which covers this same story, however, states that "it's not clear any major scientific ground has been broken, and tests may not be able to show whether the new bone came from stem cells, rather than from the growth factor alone." So in this case stem cells might not have anything to do with the results. That article is pretty detailed as well.
If you want to see more pictures, you can find them here.
"Such a lovely child...so full of bones"
12:50 - press return.
I was born with conjenital dislocation of the hips, which successively degraded over the years so that I had to have both hips replaced with artificial ones in 1995 at the age of 31. Although these artificial hips have been very good, I have to be careful about my weight and that I don't do jarring kinds of sports or lift heavy weights. I would have given a lot for this kind of implant to replace my degraded hips.
Perhaps in the future...
Here's a guy who is gradually turning himself into a tiger. For real ...
According to this BBC article I spotted a few months ago, some scientists are already working on growing new teeth using stem cell technology. Theoretically you could just get an injection and 6-8 weeks later, you hve a new tooth. Gotta say that this will be incredibly cool if they pull it off...
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This sort of news always reminds me of the book Neuromancer. Makes me think of all the crazy modifications people get done to themselves in that book... it seems like we're always getting one step closer to the book's fictional ideas becoming reality (which in my opinion is both good and bad).
:D
I'm still anxiously awaiting a true 'matrix' as depicted in the book!
A quote in that story, from Paul Brown, head of the Center for Tissue Regeneration Science at University College in London:
Well the titanium was for a mold, not the implant. But if your jaw was lined with titanium, prior to your 10 rounds with Mike Tyson, I think you'd find that the results would be less than desireable.
Imagine if the crumple zone on the front of your car was equally indestructable.
Instead of your jaw absorbing the impact of a collision (i.e. a mean right hook), your new inflexible jawbone would try to more or less tear free from your face. That's provided your head doesn't spin to the side first, in which case your neck (along with your spine) will take the brunt of the impact.
finnally! I can grow my replacement penis. but where do i grow it in the meantime. he used his shoulder, don't think that would be appropriate at my workplace.
-hak
If she floats, she's a witch.
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The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Yeah, I was thinking I could get a tiny little extra lower AND upper mandible grown, then I could have that freaky double mouth action thing from Alien going on...
(yeah we can laugh now, when our kids come home with a double ring of Doberman teeth circling their skulls 'cause it's the krezappy style of the day we'll be singing a different tune.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Probably not, since they are talking about the stem cells extracted from living adults, not aborted or lab-grown embryos. There is a difference. Bush's administration has funded non-embryonic stem cell research for awhile now.
Actually, since this all happened in Germany, and not in the US, I think it is a pretty good case against Bush's stem cell "policy" (more like religious idiocy, imho).
My wife finished her undergrad genetics degree (at a Canadian university) a couple of years ago, and even then she noticed an increase in the number of people from the US coming up for grad studies, since the type of work they needed to do with stem cells just wasn't possible in the US.
Stem cell research is going to happen, with or without Bush. The only variable is the country in which it is going to happen, and right now it ain't the US.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
A friend of mine who broke a toe went to the ER to have it fixed. As she was thinking to herself that the wait was taking forever, a woman was rushed in, and then my friend heard the people who accompanied her talk about how that woman no longer had a face after getting kicked by a horse, and were wondering what would or could be done.
Suddenly she didnt feel so bad about her broken toe.
When she told me, I made a mental note to stay away from large animals.
When Roy Horn was mauled by the lion, they removed a big piece of his skull to prevent brain swelling. Then they kept the skull fragment in his abdomen a couple weeks until the brain was OK. Sounds a bit creepy to move bone around like that, but its the most reliable way to keep the bone alive.
I wrote the C code inside a robotic limb lengthening machine and was able to attend many surgeries and see patient progress over time.
The basic principle is simple... break a leg and tug on it by 1 millimeter per day, and the body will fill in the gap with new bone.
The technique is called the Ilizarov technique after the Russian who discovered it. You can see in those pictures that a mechanical frame takes the place of your broken bone during the "stretching" phase. The leg is broken, but the frame keeps you able to walk nearly normal.
The most amazing operation I saw was a guy who blew away his entire tibia/fibula with a shotgun, but didn't overly destroy the blood vessels and nerves and muscle of the lower leg. They bolted one of these frames on, compressed his ankle and foot up just 4" from his knee, waited a few days for the bone to knit, and then grew him a new tibia over the course of 6 months.
You can make ANYONE taller using this technique, at about 1 inch per month.
The Russians used wrenches to turn their bolts 4 times a day, elongating the metal frame by 1/4 mm four times per day, for the 1mm total. Our device (the autogenesis device) used Intel microcontrollers and stepper motors geared down enormously, so that we elongated the frame over 1000 times per day by less than a micron each move. The result was more natural looking nerves, blood vessels, (which are also grown by this technique), the body likes the gradual movements better.
You can do all kinds of crazy stuff with this technique. One of the first patients was an Atlanta Falcons player who had one leg lengthened by a small amount and also had the foot rotated by a few degrees (again, a very small amount each day) to correct an improperly healed injury.
allowing surplus embryos that were going to be destroyed anyways to be used for scientific research that will help people is the height of degradation.
Oh give me a clone,
of my own flesh and bone,
with its Y chromosome changed to X