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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. It'll take off when cosmetic replacement is here.. by dada21 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have a mandibular excess and a maxillary deficiency (meaning my jawbone is too big and my upper face area is too small), which leads me to grind my teeth, get some major TMJ pain, and end up with ruined and crooked teeth. I've looked at all the surgeries (major, like taking your jaw OUT of your mouth entirely), and they didn't seem worth the risk. The long term problem is I'll lose all my teeth. I was the freak with the toothbrush in school, who flossed and brushed and rinsed 3 times a day. Today I'm the root canal and filling king, because of the jaw issue.

    When stem cells are available to regrow teeth, it will take off. The problem is that I expect the ADA (that's the lobbying group to keep dentists expensive and rare, like the AMA is a lobbying group to reduce the supply of doctors and rape the patients' wallets) will fight it tooth and nail. They'll do it under a mask of "religion" by a group controlled by them, but it will happen.

    Here, again, we see a market phenomenon that will either be over-regulated by the government so that it takes too long and is too expensive to bring to market, or we'll see a complete destruction of a huge opportunity to fix problems. I am willing to take a risk to deal with the teeth issue today, and I'm probably going to have to do it in India or China because I know that we won't get any favor here if it competes with the strong lobbying cartels, like the crooked dentists (or the doctors, or the CPAs, or any number of groups who have "associations" to harm consumers with bad legislation).

  2. any pics? by WormholeFiend · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Of the proto-jaw as it's taken out of the abdomen?