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."

Comments

Other bone reconstruction products

[jokestress]

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.

No help for osteoporosis

[spineboy]

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.