New scientific breakthrough - man grows back sliced off fingertip

ratmist

Well-known member
BBC NEWS | Health | The man who grew a finger

In every town in every part of this sprawling country you can find a faceless sprawling strip mall in which to do the shopping.

Rarely though would you expect to find a medical miracle working behind the counter of the mall's hobby shop. That however is what Lee Spievak considers himself to be.

"I put my finger in," Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model airplane, "and that's when I sliced my finger off."

'Pixie dust'
How? Well that's the truly remarkable part. It wasn't a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - or pixie dust as he sometimes refers to it while telling his story. Mr Speivak's brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine - sent him the powder. For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.

"The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger. It took about four weeks before it was sealed." Now he says he has "complete feeling, complete movement."

The "pixie dust" comes from the University of Pittsburgh, though in the lab Dr Stephen Badylak prefers to call it extra cellular matrix.

Pig's bladder
The process he has been pioneering over the last few years involves scraping the cells from the lining of a pig's bladder. The remaining tissue is then placed into acid, "cleaned" of all cells, and dried out. It can be turned into sheets, or a powder. It looks like a simple process, but of course the science is complex.

"There are all sorts of signals in the body," explains Dr Badylak. "We have got signals that are good for forming scar, and others that are good for regenerating tissues. One way to think about these matrices is that we have taken out many of the stimuli for scar tissue formation and left those signals that were always there anyway for constructive remodelling."

Scientists believe it stimulates cells in the tissue to grow rather than scar. If they can perfect the technique, it might mean one day they could repair not just a severed finger, but severely burnt skin, or even damaged organs.

Clinical trial
They hope soon to start a clinical trial in Buenos Aires on a woman who has cancer of the oesophagus. The normal procedure in such cases is often deadly. Doctors remove the cancerous portion and try to stretch the stomach lining up to meet the shortened oesophagus. In the trial they will place the extra cellular matrix inside the body from where the portion of oesophagus has been removed, and hope to stimulate the cells around it to re-grow the missing portion.

So could limbs be re-grown? Dr Badylak is cautious, but believes the technology is potentially revolutionary.

"I think that within ten years that we will have strategies that will re-grow the bones, and promote the growth of functional tissue around those bones. And that is a major step towards eventually doing the entire limb."

That kind of talk has got the US military interested. They are just about to start trials to re-grow parts of the fingers of injured soldiers.

Skin burns
They also hope the matrix might help veterans like Robert Henline re-grow burnt skin. He was almost killed in an explosion while serving in Iraq. His four colleagues travelling with him in the army Humvee were all killed.

He suffered 35% burns to his head and upper body. His ears are almost totally gone, the skin on his head has been burnt to the bone, his face is a swollen raw mess. So far he has undergone surgery 25 times. He reckons he has got another 30 to go. Anything that could be done in terms of regeneration would be great he says.

"Life changing! I think I'm more scared of hospitals than I am of going back to Iraq again."

Like any developing technology there are many unknowns. There are worries about encouraging cancerous growths by using the matrix. Doctors though believe that within the so called pixie dust lies an amazing medical discovery.

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Science is amazing! Anyway, I am hoping they can use this for wounded soldiers, and anyone else who might need it. It really does sound like science fiction, but it seems it's not a hoax. I wonder if someday this could be used for acne sufferers, who often end up with badly scarred faces.
 

redambition

Well-known member
that is amazing. the possibilities for helping those who have been seriously injured or disfigured are absolutely fantastic if this gets off the ground.
 

duckduck

Well-known member
That is so cool!! I
bigheart.gif
medical science.
 

ratmist

Well-known member
Quote:
Originally Posted by tadzio79
wow, I'd love to see the pics (before and after)!

The link to the BBC news item is at the top of the post. There are two videos on that page that show it growing back in all its gruesome glory.
smiles.gif
 

duckduck

Well-known member
Quote:
Originally Posted by ratmist
The link to the BBC news item is at the top of the post. There are two videos on that page that show it growing back in all its gruesome glory.
smiles.gif


Ohhhh neat! I wish they had more pictures though - there seemed to be a pretty big gap between when it was all gross looking and when it closed up.
 

kaliraksha

Well-known member
I finally watched the video AND his fingernail on that one finger grows so fast he has to cut it everyday and he got a fingerprint back- wonder if it's the same? I imagine it is. But, how neat is this!
 

user79

Well-known member
That totally reminds me of Claire in the TV show Heroes, when she snips off her baby toe and it grows back! lol
 

ratmist

Well-known member
Quote:
Originally Posted by MissChievous
That totally reminds me of Claire in the TV show Heroes, when she snips off her baby toe and it grows back! lol

lol... who knows, maybe one day cutting your finger off will be a childhood prank.
 
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