Finnish Man has New Jaw Grown from own Stemcells

Luke Starkiller · Post by **Luke Starkiller** » 2008-02-02 01:55pm

Reuters wrote: Fri Feb 1, 2008 1:46pm EST
By Sami Torma

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Scientists in Finland said 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.

Researchers said on Friday 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 told a news conference 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.

She added, the team used no materials from animals -- preventing the risk of transmitting viruses than can be hidden in an animal's DNA, and followed European Union guidelines.

Stem cells are the body's master cells and they can be found throughout the blood and tissues. Researchers have recently found that fat contains stem cells which can be directed to form a variety of different tissues.

Using a patient's own stem cells provides a tailor-made transplant that the body should not reject.

Suuronen and her colleagues -- the project was run jointly with the Helsinki University Central Hospital -- isolated stem cells from the patient's fat and grew them for two weeks in a specially formulated nutritious soup that included the patient's own blood serum.

In this case they identified and pulled out cells called mesenchymal stem cells -- immature cells than can give rise to bone, muscle or blood vessels.

When they had enough cells to work with, they attached them to a scaffold made out of a calcium phosphate biomaterial and then put it inside the patient's abdomen to grow for nine months. The cells turned into a variety of tissues and even produced blood vessels, the researchers said.

The block was later transplanted into the patient's head and connected to the skull bone using screws and microsurgery to connect arteries and veins to the vessels of the neck.

The patient's upper jaw had previously been removed due to a benign tumor and he was unable to eat or speak without the use of a removable prosthesis.

Suuronen said her team had submitted a report on the procedure to a medical journal to be reviewed.

(Reporting by Sami Torma, Editing by Maggie Fox and Michael Kahn and Matthew Jones)

This is exactly the kind of reason that stem cell research should be conducted.

Havok · Post by **Havok** » 2008-02-02 02:14pm

Damn. That is pretty awesome. Fuck our dumb ass country for not leading in this!
I wonder if something as complex as an eye can be grown?

P.S. Apparently I have A LOT of stem cells if any of you need some.

Luke Starkiller · Post by **Luke Starkiller** » 2008-02-02 02:39pm

One of the best points of this is that the new bone was grown from his own stemcells so the "Oh NOES think of teh fetuses!!1!1" crowd has nothing to complain about.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-02-02 02:41pm

havokeff wrote:Damn. That is pretty awesome. Fuck our dumb ass country for not leading in this!

Yes, particularly since this does not in any way involve embryonic stem cells.

...greatest heal system in the world my sweet ass...!

I wonder if something as complex as an eye can be grown?

In theory, yes. In practice - we're not there yet.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2008-02-02 03:28pm

Luke Starkiller wrote:One of the best points of this is that the new bone was grown from his own stemcells so the "Oh NOES think of teh fetuses!!1!1" crowd has nothing to complain about.

Actually, there's no total ban on stem cells in this country; just on stem cells harvested from embryonic fetuses; so this kind of research would be funded here. But hey, lets not get facts get in the way of kneejerking

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-02-02 03:35pm

The problem is that the ban on embryonic stem cell research as, as a side effect, also impacted the research on other forms of stem cells.

[R_H] · Post by **[R_H]** » 2008-02-02 04:37pm

Broomstick wrote:The problem is that the ban on embryonic stem cell research as, as a side effect, also impacted the research on other forms of stem cells.

Where did the researchers get the embryos from?

DrMckay · Post by **DrMckay** » 2008-02-02 07:13pm

Because no one else has said this yet:

WHY ARE WE NOT FUNDING THIS!?!

Enigma · Post by **Enigma** » 2008-02-02 07:24pm

DrMckay wrote:Because no one else has said this yet:

WHY ARE WE NOT FUNDING THIS!?!

Wrong. Peter Griffin said it first.

Though I frown on stem cells from embryos, I have no qualms whatsoever for huge funding for stem cell research.

Havok · Post by **Havok** » 2008-02-02 07:24pm

MKSheppard wrote:
Luke Starkiller wrote:One of the best points of this is that the new bone was grown from his own stemcells so the "Oh NOES think of teh fetuses!!1!1" crowd has nothing to complain about.
Actually, there's no total ban on stem cells in this country; just on stem cells harvested from embryonic fetuses; so this kind of research would be funded here. But hey, lets not get facts get in the way of kneejerking

It's not a god damned kneejerk Shep...

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Scientists in Finland...

We are the most god damned prosperous country in the world. This news should be coming from us, not from other countries and certainly not from scientists and doctors that come here to get schooled and then have to go abroad to get this done.
(I know that isn't necessarily the situation in this case)

Enigma · Post by **Enigma** » 2008-02-02 07:29pm

I know here in Canada there research on stem cells and its applications. Hell there's a doctor here I think in Ontario that has been able to stop and even reverse (to a certain degree) the effects of MS in patients with the use of bone marrow stem cell transplants.

Anarchist Bunny · Post by **Anarchist Bunny** » 2008-02-02 07:47pm

[R_H] wrote:
Broomstick wrote:The problem is that the ban on embryonic stem cell research as, as a side effect, also impacted the research on other forms of stem cells.
Where did the researchers get the embryos from?

From the government response it would seem like they were extracted from kidnapped women impregnanted willingly by a spouse in a back alley via a shopvac with a coat hanger mounted on it like a bayonet.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-02-02 11:58pm

MKSheppard wrote:
Luke Starkiller wrote:One of the best points of this is that the new bone was grown from his own stemcells so the "Oh NOES think of teh fetuses!!1!1" crowd has nothing to complain about.
Actually, there's no total ban on stem cells in this country; just on stem cells harvested from embryonic fetuses; so this kind of research would be funded here. But hey, lets not get facts get in the way of kneejerking

You are an idiot Shep. There are 11 lines that are useable for research, and they are starting to degrade last I checked. No lab that uses federal funds can do embryionic stem cell research on other lines unless they A) get a new lab B) have entirely separate equipment, ans C) have different personnel. Why? because the lab was built using federal funds, equipment was purchased using federal funds and *gasp* how is the staff paid? Federal funds. Fuck, I work in a social insect lab and MY paychecks are derived from NSF and NIH grant money

Tiriol · Post by **Tiriol** » 2008-02-03 05:48am

Ah, good news for medicine from Finland. I had missed this in our own newspapers for some reason. Shame on me.

Incidentally, I remember a news article about a man who lost half of his face (or something similarly bad) during World War II on the Finnish front. Instead of handing him a Phantom of the Opera's mask, the doctors made him a new face by using his own skin: they somehow attached the skin on his arm to his forehead and slowly allowed it to grow there. It took some time, but at least the man had a face afterwards.

My memory about the details, though, are incredibly hazy. I don't remember the man's name, was it his face that had this misfortune, or something else.

Zablorg · Post by **Zablorg** » 2008-02-03 05:59am

Could people re-grow penises with this? Because ages ago I read that a donkey once had a go at a little pantless kid.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2008-02-05 05:23pm

Zablorg wrote:Could people re-grow penises with this? Because ages ago I read that a donkey once had a go at a little pantless kid.

Penises we can do; I recall reading an article here awhile back where they successfully grew a rabbit yonker on a scaffold.
More complex bits, sadly, are still out of reach.