Researchers at Columbia University have regrown the destroyed joints of rabbits by shaping a scaffolding that encourages bones to heal in particular forms:
The top three images on the left show the process working, and the bottom picture shows natural cartilage.
Link via DVICE | Photo: Jeremy Mao
In research published this week in The Lancet, the researchers demonstrate that the technology--a joint-shaped scaffold infused with a growth factor protein--works in rabbits. About a month after the implant, the animals began using their injured forelimbs again, and at two months the animals moved almost as well as similarly aged healthy rabbits. The study is the first to show that an entire joint can be repaired while being used.[...]
In the study, the researchers first imaged the damaged forelimb joint and then created a three-dimensional picture of it, explains Mao, a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University Medical Center. They used a bioprinter to "print out" a precisely accurate, three-dimensional copy of the joint, but criss-crossed it with tiny interconnecting microchannels to serve as a scaffold for new bone and cartilage growth. The surgical implantation was the same used to insert titanium implants in people, Mao says.
The top three images on the left show the process working, and the bottom picture shows natural cartilage.
Link via DVICE | Photo: Jeremy Mao
Newest 5 Comments
much too young for death, you better believe we would all feel that way if we had firsthand knowledge of the suffering these experiments could alleviate. I hope you're under a doctors care and can get some pain relief until the medical technology can be made available to help you. There's no telling what breakthroughs are just around the corner.
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i am 34 and have arthritis and if it gets much worse i have decided to kill myself right now i dont give a f*ck about bunnies and if you were in my place neither would you
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I'm a big fan of dying off naturally, but I won't be put off if I can go into my deathbed walking with my own legs, supported by my own not-so-frail bones. I'll love bunnies even more if they are helping make my final years less miserable.
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Stuff like this is amazing and a triumph of the scientific process. Next stop would be human clinical trials, but before that we stand on the shoulders of bunnies. So many of them died to better our lives. Respect the bunny. Plus they taste good.
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Studies like this never stress the fact that the rabbits' legs were carefully, deliberately broken in the first place, and then the bunnies were killed one by one at various stages so that results could be examined. I know, I know. Big deal. I eat meat, and I'm no activist, but I hate the fact that creatures are made to suffer with the end result that waaay too many humans have longer, better lives yada yada. Let us all die off naturally, I say. I volunteer. Just let Glenn Beck get in line before me, please.
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