Two years ago, Professor Prasad Shastri and his collaborators developed amethod for growing new bone
and cartilage without using any expensive orcomplicated machines. Their method is brilliantly simple and it produces someof the highest quality bone and cartilage that tissue engineers have been ableto develop to date.
They very gently create a cavity between the sticky outer membrane of a bone, called the periosteum, and the bone itself and then squirt asoft alginate gel into the newly formed crevice. Cells on the inside of thesticky coating then do all of the work. First, the gel fills with a swarm ofnew bone making cells, then those cells begin to surround themselves with bloodvessels and hard mineral. Eventually, a beautiful new piece of bone is formed.
That new bone can then be removed and transplanted to repair damage elsewherein the body.
At the American Chemical Society meeting in Chicago thisTuesday, Professor Shastri told a room packed with scientists that his method
can also be used to grow perfectly formed cartilage. Only a few small changesto his procedure were necessary. The newly grown cartilage could be used torepair joints as well as the facial tissue of people badly injured inaccidents. The new cartilage made by this innovative procedure combines soseamlessly with damaged cartilage that it takes a second glance to figure outwhere the transplanted tissue stops and the repaired tissue begins.
