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Injectable Artificial Bone Developed
An anonymous reader writes in with the news that British scientists have invented artificial "injectable bone" that flows like toothpaste and hardens in the body. This new regenerative medicine technology provides a scaffold for the formation of blood vessels and bone tissue, then biodegrades. The injectable bone can also deliver stem cells directly to the site of bone repair, the researchers say. "Not only does the technique reduce the need for dangerous surgery, it also avoids damaging neighboring areas, said [the inventor]. The technology's superiority over existing alternatives is the novel hardening process and strength of the bond... Older products heat up as they harden, killing surrounding cells, whereas 'injectable bone' hardens at body temperature — without generating heat — making a very porous, biodegradable structure."
Inject someone, let it form a scaffold for tissue to clot and block vital organs, and then it degrades, leaving no trace. Sure beats those KGB umbrella poison injectors.
Apart from the typical 'viagra for your bones' innuendo gags this is actually a pretty amazing feat...
I just wonder what it 'biodegrades' into... and if you really want that in your bloodstream.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. -- Leo Tolstoy
Yeah yeah. It's /. Nobody believes me.
They just don't realize how ugly these chicks have been.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
He'll be so excited
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I wonder if they can make an adamantium version of this? X-Men Origins Trailer
TFA is light in details, but no surgery? How do you make the paste take the shape you want it to, then? You can't possibly let it flow just like that, can you? A little quirk (pun intended), and the patient ends up with a deformed body.
It reminded me more of a certain scene from X-Men 2 involving liberal internal application of adamantium.
This is extremely old news - The injectable bone story was covered by the Sun two years ago....
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Anyone else imagine a caulking gun shoved into a guy?
Thanks to goatse, I don't have to.
-- Do you need the literal version? Here, let me draw a picture.
Your sig makes your post even more disturbing.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
I think your Viagra killer has just arrived.
We already have bone cement. Have a look: - http://www.totaljoints.info/CEM_FIX_CementStruct.jpg, and http://www.totaljoints.info/BoneCement_microscopy.jpg
Skele-gro from Harry Potter anyone?
It's gonna be a whopping 15 seconds before the body modification types get their hands on this, and start using it to implant horns, bumps, random appendages, what-have-you wherever they please :P
Anyone ever see the story about the guy who implanted horns on himself? http://www.ambient.ca/bodmod/implants.html
This seems like a much better alternative than silicone or teflon or whatever they're using these days. I could go for
"flows like toothpaste"
So, your wife's going to leave all your bone stuck in one end?
That suddenly seems much more pornographic than I intended it.
Figure out a way to use it to make a person taller, I might have a reason to go find a plastic surgeon. Being 5'10 as a guy sucks.
And what's the point if it's just going to degrade anyway?
...you just make a little hole or two, yank everything around to where you want it, squirt in some bone juice...
This product will need some careful marketing.
OMG, the guy that invented this stuff is named Quirk!
Actually I took "Injectable Artificial Bone Developed" a completely different direction...
Following the snicker to the Gods of obvious marketing difficulties, I imagined that a new model of the common female "Personal Massager" (AKA Dildo) was in development...
Bone cement (poly-methy-methacrylate (PMMA)) was originally invented to hold joint replacements in place. It is not a good long term solution, because it stress shields the bone, and then the bone basically dissolves away.
Bone cement can not "glue" two pieces of bone together, as it is only strong on compression, and will break in a few days if used for that.
The only long term solution for bones is a biological one, where new bone is grown. So far ALL of the attempts to "Grow" bone have failed. Yes there are many products out there that supposedly grow bone, but I've used most of them, and none work well at all - most just sit there like a lump of plaster.
Forming new bone is a "Holy Grail" of sorts in orthopaedic surgery, since many trauma patients, and "re-do" patients are missing bone, and we have no good way to reform the bone. This can lead to mega-prosthesis, or even amputations. There are a few ways to "stretch" out bone, but this often takes months with the patient walking around with circular metal pin frames protruding out thru their skin.
..........FULL STOP.
Okay, if they can do it for bones, can they do it for dental repair?
I'm developing an artificial bone right now that I'd sure like to inject into something...
or else!
Fuck that. Patent whores.
E.T. BONE Home !!!! the artificially intelligent bone!
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
Similar techniques are being tried also to regrow damaged or missing cartilage.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070906104136.htm
It looks like the current trend is to use stem cells from within a patient's own body. That way there are no ethical issues and no worries about tissue rejection. Researchers are figuring out ways to extract stem cells from a patient's own blood.
http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news/Breakthrough-isolating-embryo-quality-stem-cells-from-blood-669-1/
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Dem bones, dem bones, dem liquefied bones....
Yes, but how many murder weapons then leave the crime scene picture-perfect - "They died of natural causes - a clot in a vital organ | artery | whatever"?
A few months ago, after a car accident, I was asked to take part in human trials for this stuff. When I tried to decline, the doctor told me I had to grow some backbone.
Thank you. I'll be here all week. Don't forget to tip the waitress.
This sounded great when I was reading it but it also got me to thinking, how does the stuff take shape? In short: I am missing the "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag
You're probably not far off.
I studied this exact kind of stuff (well, very obsolete versions of it) in grad school, early 1990's. A class presentation that I gave once made the point that the three main surgical instruments used in joint-replacement surgeries were:
A saw.
A drill.
A hammer.
And these surgeries are violent.
This injectable bone idea, while not brand new, is very interesting, and I have to appreciate that a non-exothermic hardening process is a significant part of that. Some polymers used as fixatives in implants, like (very possibly obsolete) poly-methyl methacrylate, are *very* exothermic as they set, and extreme care has to be taken to use only the minimal required amount; picture a thicker-than-necessary glob of the stuff sitting in an unevenly-drilled femur as the shaft of a hip replacement is put into place, and that glob heating up as it sets, weakening or destroying the bone, and at least (I'd imagine) causing incomprehensible pain.
So, this non-exothermic stuff is way cool.
The biodegradable aspect (calling to mind poly-lactic acid artery/vein grafts, which degrade into plain ol' lactic acid, which the body knows how to deal with) is a serious bonus.
world's worst pickup line EVAR
I don't know what they're talking about anyway. I've had a natural injectable bone my whole life. Nothing new here.
I see this more for in the future when they do reconstructive surgery for replacing someone's legs....
they need to add artificial nerves, as well as graft some skin and what not to make the artificial leg more believable....as when you look at real bone you see the nerves going through the bone in millions of little pin holes....so for us to make the same instead of worrying about making the holes...we would place the nerve optic fibers laying in place then fill the bone around it forming a reall leg so to speak.....this is way off though....looking at maybe another 20 years before seeing light.
178 cm is average or above average in most of the world.
Where do you live? Lost Kingdom of basketball players?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
--Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
So does yours.
A key piece of information left out in the article is the hardening time. If it hardened enough in a matter of minutes, so that is could be stitched over, if could be used instead of bone grafts in tooth extractions. Bone grafts used now are powdered bone tissue from cadavers, and as the extraction site heals, bits of it keep peeling off - somewhat icky and counterproductive.
I know someone who was in a car accident at age ten. He damaged one of the growth plates in his left leg, as a result he now has one leg a couple of inches shorter than the other. To date, there's been no good way to lengthen the short leg to the full length of the uninjured leg, and he isn't fond of the idea of shortening the longer one. Will this be able to help him?
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
only barely work, and are mostly used in desperation, and last resort.
..........FULL STOP.
Invented by Ilizarov - a Siberian doctor who made the original circular wire frame from bicycle wheels. Nowadays they are much better. It involves cutting the bone and applying a multi-ring pin into bone stabilizer system, and then stretching the bone 1mm/day. Yes 1 millimeter per day! Takes usually a month to lengthen a leg one inch.
Injectable bone will not work, as the muscles, nerves, arteries and veins all need to be lengthened too.
This is a fairly common procedure in the USA, and is routinely done at any major medical center where there is an orthopaedics residency training program.
..........FULL STOP.
this line of thought is surprisingly deficient in logic
this guy has it right:
Just about everything from this to a piece of string could be used as a grisly murder weapon
My wife had this "grout" injected on an experimental basis to fill in for a a couple crushed disks. She was in constant severe pain before, but after the surgery she has found her back get better and better. Her middle aged back will never be as strong or pain free as a 19 year old's, but at least she has a back that if she does not do any lifting over 25 pounds and is careful she is pain free. The surgery also used some tubular "spacer" to keep the joints apart until things fused. The x-rays showed her back joints fused just as planed in a matter of weeks. I don't if she had the same stuff or if we would have had the same outcome with the same good surgeon, but it has been a wonderful outcome that has vastly improved both our lives.
Really, there are already injectable bone fillers on the market. Many of them. Google Norian or bone fillers or Demineralized Bone.
This is so not news. It's not even Fark.
As soon as I read the story, I was curious to if they could inject titanium. :) More practically, it would seem they could inject something resembling carbon fiber. Ahh, light and very strong. How long would it be before they started doing it to the military to avoid bone breakage? It doesn't avoid the more fatal problem of bullet holes and IED's though.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
In other news, Count Aral and his Betan wife, Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan,
announced today that they are expecting their first child, a baby boy.
Rather than using a uterine replicator, the young heir, who will be third
in line to the Barrayan throne, is being gestated naturally, as is the
custom on his father's homeworld of Barrayar. Everyone here at WRMHL,
"the heart of Escobar" wishes them the best, and a safe and healthy pregnancy.
Now, onto sports, where the Komarran Raiders played the Jackson Whole
Splicers in a deadly game of...
For those who don't know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Vorkosigan
But JK Rowling would probably sue them.
Q: What's the difference between an orthopedic surgeon and a carpenter?
A: A carpenter usually knows the names of more than two antibiotics