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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."
I just wonder what it 'biodegrades' into... and if you really want that in your bloodstream.
It would be my guess that if it is considered to be "biodegradable" in the human body, they mean that it is fully and wholly metabolized by the human body without generating any inflammatory or toxic reaction. There are several polymers which fit this scenario, such as one based on glycolic acid and lactic acid. The cool thing about this stuff is its rigidity and lack of tissue damage. /me isn't close to a medical student, but google can make me sound like I am.
Not no surgery, less surgery.
Instead of opening someone up, pulling out the hammer and power tools and doing some serious repair work you just make a little hole or two, yank everything around to where you want it, squirt in some bone juice to bond everything, and you're done.
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
No, that's super glue (surgical cyanoacrolate).
Nah, damaged bone is rarely a reason for amputation in itself, although you can surely be incapacitated. If you manage to keep bloodflow and avoid infection, you can always try to patch it up somehow later on, with varying degrees of outside intervention to the natural healing process.
Bones are continuously maintained in a way quite different from most of a tooth. This is a trick to give the normal process to replenish bone and repair broken bones to a headstart and some basic structure to get the final layout right. Triggering the growth of a new tooth in situ is a quite different thing, especially to get the outer layers right, without which it would indeed be quite biodegradeable in any mouth.
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.
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.
You're right - for a product to be considered "absorbable" or "degradable" in patient care, the product has to eventually break down to compounds that the body naturally metabolizes. Classic example: Vicryl (tm), polyglactin 910 (90% glycolide/10% lactide polymer) suture. Water causes it to break down into glycolic acid and lactic acid, usually over the course of 56 days in tissue (unless it's placed in a wet environment, in which case it breaks down faster.) Both compounds are things your body generates and metabolizes on a daily basis, and no trace of the suture remains in the body once it's been broken down, hence the suture is "absorbable." Absorbable products can be made of synthetic compounds (Vicryl and other synthetic absorbable sutures, hyaluronic acid preparations) or of naturally occurring substances (plain and chromic gut sutures, various preparations of collagen).
Back to TFA, this stuff doesn't look a whole lot different from demineralized bone matrix, which is already fairly common (although expensive as hell). DBX doesn't really provide any immediate structural strength to compromised bone, since it's only bone protein with no mineral structure. It just provides a scaffold for the body's own osteoblasts to build on - it allows them to skip a step in fracture repair, in other words. Calling it "injectable bone" might be a bit of a stretch.
(Full disclosure: The author is a former surgical rep turned nursing student.)
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.
i believe the difference is that your dentist used the cadaver bone and protein mix to create a mortar type substance (like you said) - that is just to fill the space up. but the bone is not live i.e. -- if it gets damaged it wont heal it self, there are no nerves in it, and your body wont naturally maintain it
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.