Doctors seek to regrow parts of fingers

February 14, 2007

Doctors at a Texas military base are testing a procedure on wounded Iraq veterans that may allow them to regrow portions of lost fingers.

The procedure involves treatments with a fine powder called extracellular matrix, which is taken from the bladders of pigs, the Wall Street Journal said. The substance is what cells latch on to in mammals to allow them to divide and grow into tissue.

Scientists who developed the procedure say the substance appears to activate latent biological processes in humans that encourage healing and tissue regeneration. They said the processes are active in human fetuses, which have the ability to regenerate and grow new parts, but the ability becomes dormant after birth.

"Fetuses can regenerate just about everything," said Stephen Badylak, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. "If those signals are there, how can we turn them back on?"

David Baer, manager of the U.S. Army unit's bone and soft-tissue program, said the team does not expect soldiers to regrow whole fingers.

"We'd love to see bone, but we don't know," Baer said. The hope is for an inch of soft tissue, with blood vessels and nerves, that soldiers can pinch their thumbs against and restore some function.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International


Rank 4 /5 (14 votes)
Tags

Relevant PhysicsForums posts

More news stories

Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins

Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...

Medicine & Health / Research

created 4 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Both maternal and paternal age linked to autism

Older maternal and paternal age are jointly associated with having a child with autism, according to a recently published study led by researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created 9 hours ago | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

New understanding of DNA repair could eventually lead to cancer therapy

A research group in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta is hoping its latest discovery could one day be used to develop new therapies that target certain types of cancers.

Medicine & Health / Cancer

created 8 hours ago | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Curry spice component may help slow prostate tumor growth

Curcumin, an active component of the Indian curry spice turmeric, may help slow down tumor growth in castration-resistant prostate cancer patients on androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), a study from researchers ...

Medicine & Health / Cancer

created 10 hours ago | popularity 4.5 / 5 (6) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Human cognitive performance suffers following natural disasters, researchers find

Not surprisingly, victims of a natural disaster can experience stress and anxiety, but a new study indicates that it might also cause them to make more errors - some serious - in their daily lives. In their upcoming Human Fa ...

Medicine & Health / Psychology & Psychiatry

created 6 hours ago | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 0


Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets

Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.

Anonymous knocks CIA website offline (Update)

The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.

New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission

Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. They’re a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel — such as an optical fiber o ...

Putting the squeeze on planets outside our solar system

(PhysOrg.com) -- Using high-powered lasers, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and collaborators discovered that molten magnesium silicate undergoes a phase change in the liquid state, abruptly ...

The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males

A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...

NASA sees wide-eyed cyclone Jasmine

Cyclone Jasmine's eye has opened wider on NASA satellite imagery, as it moves through the Southern Pacific Ocean.