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Building Artificial Bone
Late-Eight writes "Researchers from the National University of Singapore, have recently developed a new way to make artificial bone from mineralised collagen. For some time scientists have tried to make nanosized artificial bone materials using various methods, And have recently turned their attention to mineralised collagen, a nanoapatite/collagen composite. This material is highly biocompatible and has the nanostructure of artificial bone. It could be used in bone grafts and bone-tissue engineering, among other applications."
Any help here for those with osteoporosis?
my girlfriend has 3 artificial bones. she keeps them in the sock drawer
Pfizer already has an edge in the artificial bone industry.
...such as some seriously retro drumsticks.
Demented But Determined.
Biomimetic Man just doesn't have the same ring to it..
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything. - Oscar Wilde
For those interested in the topic, linear high-density polyethylene like Medpor can be cut to size and allows tissue growth into the material once implanted. It is mostly for craniofacial reconstruction and generally not used in weight-bearing areas, though. There's also hydroxyapatite (nicknamed HA), derived from coral. Pretty cool stuff.
Evil sig is livE.
I'm looking at having a mid-foot fusion sometime in the next year. Nasty operation. 3 months off my feet (and off work), only to be repeated a second time if it fails. Any weight on the joint in the first 6 weeks ruins the operation completely. Non-union's a 10-15% risk anyway, and there's also the risk of instability in the joint. I don't want to do it, but I'm told if I leave it too long I won't be able to walk and that in the medium term I have no other options. Once fused the bones can't be un-fused with current medical techniques. One of the bones I'm having fused looks like swiss cheese in the MRI and CAT scans. I'm worried that even if the fusion is a success it'll crumble in the long term. From a technical point of view the whole op seems like a really bad idea - it's just all they have to offer. Ever since I found out I've thought the best way would be to replace bad/worn out bone. I wonder if I've just been born a little early for proper bone replacement to be an option.
Unlike hip and knee replacements ankle surgery (especially replacements - thankfully not what I'm dealing with) don't have a high success rate. I wonder if this'll do anything to improve that.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Not effective (er...in games anyway) but entirely disconcerting.
Quack, quack.
They could really use a spine implant.
Oh, artificial bones. I thought it said "artificial boners"
Get it? You insert dildos...
It's a double-ended-entendre and pun all in one!
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
But I just prefer a good dose of skelegrow.
Man, wake me up when something interesting comes along. Having a degree in this subject, I'll just point out that people have been fooling around with this stuff for years, and this article doesn't even represent a small advancement. Second, just because you mimic the structure of bone doesn't mean that the bone in your body gives a damn. Bone will grow over any "osteoconductive" material depending on the architecture of the scaffold that you make out of it. Surface nanostructures have been shown to effect bone cells in petri dishes but in terms of a full-on in vivo test, they are difficult to work with because they are so delicate, as I imagine this would be. Also, though I didn't look up the article itself, there didn't seem to be any in vivo testing. It just looked like a plain old characterization of a (not-so-)new material, which means it's pretty much worthless for any human use at least for the next two years.
I'm a little skeptical of this. Not so much the concept - artificial bones aren't terribly difficult, unless you're going for an exact copy of bone composition, which isn't strictly necessary. In fact, it may not be optimal, depending on what it's used for.
Where I'm skeptical is in the immune response. I just attended a talk by someone looking to join our biomaterials department, and there was an allergic reaction to hyaluronan, a common in cartilage and various joint fluids. Just because we all have it, doesn't mean we won't react to it, or to chemical markers which have been missed.
Now, if they can successfully implant this into a host creature without an immune reaction, this might be a little bit more encouraging.
Bones heal by themselves anyway, and I, like most people, am not missing any bones, so where is the benefit for this technology?
Burns going down, but works nicely.
I'll just point out that people have been fooling around with this stuff for years. Second, just because you mimic the structure of bone doesn't mean that the bone in your body gives a damn. Bone will grow over any "osteoconductive" material depending on the architecture of the scaffold that you make out of it. Surface nanostructures have been shown to effect bone cells in petri dishes but in terms of a full-on in vivo test, they are difficult to work with because they are so delicate, as I imagine this would be.
Also, though I didn't look up the article itself, there didn't seem to be any in vivo testing. It just looked like a plain old characterization of a (not-so-)new material.
Examples of things like it on the market: MasterGraft by Medtronic, ViTOSS by Orthovita, and others
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...possible for Jeff Smith to sue? After all, he came up with Phoney Bone first...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Generally, the thought is that we should stick something into the hole and let the bone grow into it, and that works to a point, but once the gap gets SO large that you're basically just putting a piece of plastic/collagen in to fully replace the bone, it simply won't work anymore. The bone will not grow through the whole thing. It will just grow into the ends of the scaffold and stop after a while.
So, I don't think this article was trying to say that, even though the media might be trying to hype it that way. Bone healing simply doesn't do this. You will never see a fake femur made of some kind of spongy plastic or collagen material that simply gets stuck in place of a bone.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1748-3190/2/3/001 Theres the abstract. Full text costs money apparently.
may benefit from this...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
No idea how applicable this is, but a guy back home crushed some cervical vertebrae (freak accident) and they wound up putting him in traction, picking the bits out, and sliding a piece of (deproteinated) cow femur they had machined to shape (my impression was it was a cylinder open along one side i.e. U-shaped in profile) over his spinal cord. Not 100% recovery but he's walking around.
maybe you can find a good machinist and retread some cow parts...
The first "artificial human" doesn't look that far off now...
This material is highly biocompatible and has the nanostructure of artificial bone
WOW!
Nano material for making artficial bone has the nanostructure of artificial bones?
Next up, a mythical creature with the body of a horse and the face of a horse!
Osteoporosis is a medical problem - generally low amounts of estrogen prevent inhibition of osteoclasts, which therefore resorb the bone faster than the osteoblasts produce new bone.
This article is about surgical substitutes. Bone grafts today are for large visable defects that are either filled in, or are entire segments that are replaced. Generally the donated bone is only changed at the end - about 7mm worth. The rest of the dead, donated bone does not change over, and is generally weaker, and subject to infection at a higher rate.
Bone is complicated - it is a mineral scaffold which houses living bone cells. Most bone substitute just provides the scaffolding (conductive), and some actually induce new bone to form (Inductive), which relies on chemical signals to help cells differentiate into bone forming cells (osteoblasts).
This sounds like they have made a very natural appearing scaffolding, which makes it easy for the new bone cells to move in, and produce normal appearing bone. This is a nice tweak on the existing technology, but not a major breakthru which will help to form new large segmens of bone.
..........FULL STOP.
Unfortunately I think a proper bone replacement is still a long ways off. In addition to figuring out an ideal material, we still have to figure out how to make the tendons and ligaments attach normally to the fake bone.
We also don't have a good idea of how to get rapid cellular invasion of very large bone grafts. Living bone is actually full of cells that tear down and rebuild the hard bits. This keeps our bones from wearing out the way a piece of metal will, due to wear and cracks in the microstructure. Unfortunately the cells in bone don't move that fast (0.23mm/day or so in perfect lab conditions with no bone in the way), and if you replace a whole load bearing bone at once you can have problems with the cells refusing to migrate into the center of the new bone material. This is, in part, why they'll try to use as much of the load bearing bone that's still there when they go to fuse a joint, instead of just cutting everything out and packing in a hydroxyapatite implant.
The last barrier to a real bone replacement is getting the replacement bone in the right shape. It's actually pretty difficult to build something up to be the same shape as a bone before you take the bone out of a person. And that's assuming that you have a "good" bone as a reference. (In your case they'd need to make sure the new bone wasn't full of holes, and quite probably adjust the shape to promote a more normal joint posture)
I work in a biomechanics lab, for the orthopedics at a major hospital (we mostly work with spine biomechanics) and believe me the surgeons would like nothing better than to be able to just pop out a bad bone and replace it. I just think we're a lot further from making that happen than papers like this make it sound. When somebody does figure it out I'm betting it happens for long bones like radius, ulna, humerus, tibia etc first, since perfect geometry isn't a big issue and the tendon/ligament insertions are pretty spaced out.
I guess that's my long-winded way of saying that a better solution to your ankle problem probably isn't going to develop out of this any time in the next decade or two. Which is too bad because all the work I've done with ankles tells me that the solutions we have could use a lot of improving.
If somehow, it would be possible to give me regrown bone hips instead of these metal ones, I would be a very happy man.
You said "bone".
I don't want to hear any of it until they can make a rat bone.
made of pure adamantium. Bub.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
So this artificial bone material is similar to artificial bone, why is that suprising? I could say the same thing about wood if it was used as artificial bone (http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF086AD-Yarteries.jpg# 153), it doesn't mean it would be good or bad at the job. If it has the nanostructure of bone then that is significant.
Better keep the Abido dogs away from the reseach lab.
Having been hit by a car while cycling 6 months ago and having my patella turned into a million pieces and dust I'd like to see a replacement patella, both bone and cartledge. What's left of mine is wrapped in wire, they nearly removed it altogether but apparently that really is a last resort as lose you 50% of your leg strength. I can hobble/walk slowly and that's it, no more cycling,running and I have to go down stairs sideways as my leg can't take a full body load when bent to any degree. And lots and lots of pain. Who would have thought breaking such a small bone would cause such misery. Oh yeah, I'm guarenteed to get OA of the knee as the cartledge will basically wear away to leave bone on bone contact. If I'm lucky I'll get knee replacement, although I will probably have to wait till I'm at least in my 50's, which is twenty years away ...
I need to kick some ass.
I could use a monomolecular blade implant, too.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!