Bone Engineering Continues to Progress
Via Canada.com: scientists have "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] 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."
Link: http://www.canada.com/topics/bodyandhealth/story.html?id=75c2dbd1-c77d-4200-a827-3df5066504e6