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from the no-rinds-were-harmed-in-the-making-of-this-jawbone dept.
Scientists Synthesize Jawbones From Pig Fat (archive)
In patients with congenital defects or who have suffered accidental injuries, the jawbone is nearly impossible to replace. Curved and complex, the bone ends with a joint covered with a layer of cartilage. Both parts must withstand enormous pressures as people chew.
"It is one of the most loaded bones in the human body," said Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, a professor of biomedical engineering, medicine and dental medicine at Columbia University in New York.
In a paper published in Science Translational Medicine [DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abb6683] [DX] on Wednesday, she and her colleagues reported a surprising success: They managed to grow replacement bones, along with their joints, from the stem cells of pigs. A clinical trial will soon begin in patients with severe birth defects.
The researchers say they hope the same sort of technique can someday be used to grow other replacement bones and joints, including knees. Even if the strategy works, however, it will be years before those who need new jawbones or joints can have them engineered from their own cells.
Journal Reference:
David Chen, Josephine Y. Wu, Kelsey M. Kennedy, et al. Tissue engineered autologous cartilage-bone grafts for temporomandibular joint regeneration [$], Science Translational Medicine (DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.abb6683)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nostyle on Friday October 16 2020, @01:45PM
This story raises so many questions...
1) If stem cells from swine fat can be used to grow replacement bones, does this mean that we won't need to be preserving umbilical cords of newborns for future stem cell harvesting?
2) (And can we put umbilical banks in space to reduce the cost of cryogenic storage?)
3) (And if, when my mother delivered my younger brother stillborn, the carcass had been preserved, would that have been potentially of benefit to me?)
4) Is it even conceivable, given a fully grown jaw-bone, that it could be surgically inserted "in your face"? - (It seems to me that this would be pretty nearly brain-surgery complicated.)
5) How many people would ever need a full replacement of a jaw-bone anyway, and would the economics of a jaw-bone replacement industry ever make sense?
6) Jaws aren't much good without teeth, so do the teeth automagically grow on the jaw, or do they need to be grown separately?
7) If you can grow teeth separately and implant them, could this revolutionize dentistry?
8) Wouldn't it make more sense to only pin in a small section of jaw-bone leaving only dual-breakage of bone to heal naturally?
9) What happens to the nerves that go to the teeth when jaw replacement surgery is done?
10) Why would the FSM ever let these jaw defects to occur in his noodley creation?
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Please excuse me if my ignorance is showing.