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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.
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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.
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.
We already have bone cement. Have a look: - http://www.totaljoints.info/CEM_FIX_CementStruct.jpg, and http://www.totaljoints.info/BoneCement_microscopy.jpg
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
...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.
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.
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
5'10 is a perfectly normal height for a guy. Most women are shorter, unless they're wearing heals.
And in case they sustain a terrible foot injury, they can use this injectable paste to heal their heals.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I'm sure I don't want mine to degrade noisily, either.
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.
About 5 years ago, I had an apicoectomy to treat a chronically abscessed tooth. The abscess had been around long enough to eat away some of the bone surrounding the root. The oral surgeon replaced the missing bone with a special mixture of cadaver bone in a protein matrix. Since it was open surgery and the root end of the tooth was exposed, he just packed it in there the same way a bricklayer would pack mortar into a joint. It seems reasonable that it could also be injected if one had a wide enough needle so that the bone bits wouldn't get stuck.
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.
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.