To heal big bone wounds, we could one day inject ‘spackle’
A cell-based therapy can drastically accelerate the bone regeneration process after injury, research with mice shows.
Large, complex bone wounds are hard for doctors and patients alike to contend with. They often require grafts and multiple surgeries.
Jan Stegemann, professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan, is reprogramming adult cells from bone marrow so that they can be injected directly into a wound and grow into bone. The marrow-derived cells are known as progenitor cells, a type of adult stem cell that maintains the ability to differentiate into several different cell types.
Stegemann’s team’s latest work appears in the journal Biomaterials. He explains their approach here:
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