Unless one has infused one’s entire skeletal structure with the mythical adamantium from the Marvel Universe, every single one of us do happen to have bones that will snap and break if enough force is applied to it. When that happens, repairing such seriously damaged bones can prove to be quite a challenge, and if you would want to regrow those same bones faster than usual, it would require careful management on the part of the medical team as well as patient so that the right shape if produced. Researchers over at Rice University do seem to have come up with a gel that makes it a whole lot easier to produce only the bone tissue that a patient requires.
This particular material is known as a hydrogel, where it is capable of kickstarting bone regeneration using a patient’s stem cells. Not only that, the hydrogel will also be able to dictate just where that growth occurs as it forms a scaffold which will degrade only when tissue takes its place. In other words, the doctor’s job is made a whole lot simpler as all that they need to do is to fill up an area with the gel and wait for nature and time to complete the job.
This particular technique ought to come in handy at first to repair skull damage, and it is also likely to come in handy as well where less important operations (minor ones, that is) and cosmetic surgery are concerned. [Press Release]
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