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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.
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?
Ah the erectile dysfunction pills and penile enhancement industry is in trouble now.
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?
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
Because it wasn't necessary to remain in his body? I wouldn't exactly want a titanium bulge sticking out of my side if I didn't need it.
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.
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.
The poor guy hasn't had a jaw in 9 years. He wants to be able to eat like a normal person. I understand that you feel this makes him whining, but the whole point behind medicine is to restore normal function. Its not like he was asking for the doc to grow a laser on his head or something. It is understandable that he would feel this way. I am sure he would agree that what they had done for him was a major improvement in his life, though.
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...
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Besides, this was done in Germany. Even if the Theocratic States of America succeed in shutting down all medical progress, they're happy to outsource this sort of thing. Need a new kidney? Fly to Germany, they'll be happy to grow you a new one.
John
> I wouldn't exactly want a titanium bulge [...]
Oh, I don't know. The ladies love mine.
Don't believe the FUD. Bush is not against stem cell research. He has prevented such research that involves the destruction of human embryos from receiving federal funding. Research involving stem cells from adults, animals, and cord blood, which are all highly promising, is federally funded and ongoing.
--riney
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.
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...
A quote in that story, from Paul Brown, head of the Center for Tissue Regeneration Science at University College in London:
Bah, you have no idea how the man feels, or how his jawbone feels, or anything really. Look at you: you're bitching about people you don't even know.
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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
A common misconception here on /. is that Bush is against stem cell research. The fact is that he's not. He is against stem cell harvesting from aborted fetuses. The law he signed bans only federal funding for stem cell research that uses fetus stem cells. This does not prevent private research in this area at all. In fact, there are now ways to harvest stem cells from adults, and thus doesn't have the same moral complications as the previous method.
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
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.