Medicine’s Cutting Edge: Re-Growing Organs, The Future Is Here: Regenerative Powder, Ink Jet Heart Cells And Custom-Made Body Parts
Posted by Xeno on March 26, 2008
Regenerative powder?! Where have they been hiding that?
Imagine re-growing a severed fingertip, or creating an organ in the lab that can be transplanted into a patient without risk of rejection. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. It’s the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine, in which scientists are learning to harness the body’s own power to regenerate itself, with astonishing results. Correspondent Wyatt Andrews brings you to the scientific frontier.
Three years ago, Lee Spievack sliced off the tip of his finger in the propeller of a hobby shop airplane. What happened next, Andrews reports, propelled him into the future of medicine. Spievack’s brother, Alan, a medical research scientist, sent him a special powder and told him to sprinkle it on the wound.”I powdered it on until it was covered,” Spievack recalled.
To his astonishment, every bit of his fingertip grew back.
“Your finger grew back,” Andrews asked Spievack, “flesh, blood, vessels and nail?”
“Four weeks,” he answered.
