Yet another stem cell miracle performed with a patient's own stem cells and not requiring the murder of an unborn child: scientists in Finland have grown a jaw bone replacement and successfully implanted it.
Scientists in Finland said Friday that they had replaced a 65-year-old patient's upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen.The researchers said the breakthrough opened up new ways to treat severe tissue damage and made the prospect of custom-made living spares parts for humans a step closer to reality.
"There have been a couple of similar-sounding procedures before, but these didn't use the patient's own stem cells that were first cultured and expanded in laboratory and differentiated into bone tissue," said Riitta Suuronen of the Regea Institute of Regenerative Medicine, part of the University of Tampere.
She said at a news conference that the patient was recovering more quickly than he would have if he had received a bone graft from his leg.
"From the outside nobody would be able to tell he has been through such a procedure," she said.
That's amazing. Completely. We're living in a future our grandparents could never have imagined.