Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Finnish Patient Gets New Jaw from His Own Stem Cells

Posted by Soulskill on from the close-the-organ-banks dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news out of Finland, where a patient's upper jaw was replaced with bone cultivated from stem cells and grown inside the patient himself. We discussed other advances in stem cell research a few months ago. Quoting: "In this case they identified and pulled out cells called mesenchymal stem cells -- immature cells than can give rise to bone, muscle or blood vessels. When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to a scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it inside the patient's abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels, the researchers said."

2 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Bill Gates v2.0 by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Informative

    I have no doubt that Bill Gates has had himself cloned, or at least all his organs and tissues, for when his own parts wear out. Stashed around the world, as insurance against laws banning cloning.

    And if it's not viable yet, they'll just keep cloning him until they get it right.

    I know that if I had $100B, that's how I'd spend it.

    --

    --
    make install -not war

  2. Dentists have been doing this for years by teethdood · · Score: 5, Informative
    IAADWDI - I Am a Dentist Who Does Implants

    There is no such thing as an "upper jaw." We have various bones forming the base of the skull and associated teeth structures (aka maxilla) and a lower jaw (aka mandible).

    Dentists have been using stem cells for years. In certain situations when there are not enough bone to place dental implants, dentists would place bonegrafts mixed in with blood drawn from the hip marrow. You get around 5-10 stem cells for every million blood cells but that's all it takes to convert the bonegraft into the patient's own bone (the stem cells become osteoblasts). The only difference in this study versus what we have been doing is that they place the bonegraft with stem cells into the stomach for osteoconduction versus us placing the material into place right off the bat. Typical wait times for us is only 6 months before the bone is deemed solid enough for implant placement.