Boning Up: Tissue for grafts grown inside the body
Scientists have discovered a new way to stimulate one part of an animal’s body to grow extra bone tissue that can be transplanted elsewhere. The finding could be a boon for people who require grafts to replace bone segments lost to damage or disease.
The “gold standard” for such grafts is a person’s own bone tissue, says V. Prasad Shastri, a biomedical engineer at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Unlike synthetic replacements or bone taken from a cadaver, a person’s own bone doesn’t trigger immunological rejection and can adapt to physiological changes within the body.