For the first time, researchers have been able to repair bone damage with bones that have been, essentially, grown in a laboratory. Scientists at Columbia University have recently been able to create actual human bone in the lab. The hope of this advancement of growing human bone will enable doctors to repair face and head bone structural damage so as to expect a full recovery in the patient.
Not only can the researchers grow human bone, but the bone can be grown for the specific use of a particular person and designed for a particular repair in the head or the face. The bone is able to be grown from stem cells taken from some fat of the patient. The researchers state that they had successfully grown a bone in vitro to make a repair to a human jaw. It was then implanted and the repair made and there was no rejection of the bone as it fit into place perfectly and has the ability to regenerate. After the repair, the jaw functioned as it normally would have before the injury.
There is now a huge hope in the scientific and medical communities for this process. Certain hereditary situations can be repaired and those who have battled cancer operations can take advantage of this new technology as well as bones from the cancer surgery could be repaired. What has made the researchers so hopeful of the advancement is that the vascularization with blood perfusion, has been achieved far and beyond any other method or approach to date.
The researchers will continue their experiments and expect to enter clinical trials in a couple of more years. The researchers made a scaffold and a bio reactor chamber so that the proper mold and fit could be achieved. They were created by using an image of the jaw itself so as to generate an exact fit.
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