By using ultra-fine polymer fibers, military researchers have been able to regrow damaged or missing organs and limbs. They will announce their findings officially next month at the 26th Army Science Conference in Florida.
One example given by John Parmentola, a director of research and lab management, involved a man who lost the entire tip of his finger while starting up a model airplane.
“That has been completely regrown . . . the nail, the bone, the tissue,” he said.
“There is one example of a young girl who . . . was born without a sex organ, and that was regrown,” he said.
The polymers act as a trellis for new cells which climb up and through the fine scaffolding. Once the organ is regrown, the scaffold is absorbed into the body and disappears.
The process cannot yet regrow complex organs like hearts but it can create skin, bone, and nails. In 2006, nanoscaffolding was used to regrow burned skin and it was discovered that skin cells will “sort themselves” into the right arrangement if given a proper foothold. Work is also being done to use the methods to repair nerve damage and spinal injuries.
very, very awesome. can it regrow hair? there’s a big market there. :-)
It might be able to regrow hair. Hair is a specialized version of skin, almost identical to nails, so I don’t see why not. The only problem I see is that when one goes bald, they aren’t actually BALD; their head hair is replaces by much finer hair, like on your face. So you’d have to remove a layer of the scalp to do it, I think… and it still might not work.
Just postulating.
Um…no. If what you said were true, then bald peoples’ heads wouldn’t be shiny. Sorry. When people go bald (or ‘top-bald’ as is the case many times) there are no longer any hair fibers growing out of their head, I don’t care what you claim.
He’s right, but didn’t go far enough. The short, fine hairs are just a stage before the “shiny” stage. What generally happens is the hair follicles are choked by tight skin so that that full, thick hair can’t grow. It’s just a matter of time between thin hair and no hair. I too doubt this procedure could help … you need to deal with the skin and follicle issue; it’s not simply a matter of “replacing” the hair.
Umm, I’m bald. I still have fine hair on the top, just like everyone is covered with.
The shine is from the waxy oils all of our scalps produce.
As I understand it it is not ‘tight skin’ but rather a chemical/hormonal change that damages (usually crown/top) hair follicles.
The Rogane type hair restoration products that actually work block these changes. (Not loosen the skin! Ha!) Which is why if you stop using them then your new hair again falls out.
Very interesting article,the potential is there to help lots of people. It reminds me of putting up a trellis for a plant to grow up.
I read a few months ago about powder made from pig bladder being used in the same capacity (no joke). Fascinating stuff.
Puts NHS doctors to shame. More news from the military please!
There is another market “enlargement”:
When i cut my p***s and have it remodeled larger using polymer fiber trellis, will it grow bigger?!
:-)
very good question
i like how u think ahahaha
but i doubt it will grow bigger cause the fibers probably read from your DNA of how big each part of ur body is lol
It would be hilarious if you cut off your penis in order to grow a bigger one in its’ place, but there was a strike at the hospital and you never got a new one!
Penis aputation ownage!!!
it would? that would suck the dick is u ask me… lol suck the dick watta pun!
Wow. I heard about the fingertip guy last year and thought that it had been disproved as a wild overstatement of the results but sounds like they’ve been working hard to make it a reality. Just think what they’re going to be able to do in 10 years time!
Hehehe. Good one Michael. Regrowing hair would open up a multi billion dollar industry.
sounds to me like a bogus release… not sure this works really
If God had wanted us to grow back limbs He would have just made it so!
I gave the human body this ability, but you turds eat so much junk food, and stress yourselves out so much, you have lost the memory of this capability. The body itself is merely cells organized along your energy beings matrix. Go stick your head back in the sand silly literalist!
I thought so…
If your God had wanted us to have the internet He would have just made it so!
If your God had wanted us to have the hospitals He would have just made it so!
If your God had wanted us to have the able to make us make ourselves better He would have just made it so!
Oh wait, he did!
Then if God didn’t want little children to die of birth defects then he would of made it so. This would prevent people who have to right to live as anybody else to live so if you want them to die because you want to censor these achievements then fine. LOL nice name JesusSaves
i don’t get why people ay we shouldn’t advance and pwn on this world and the challenges it throws at us cuz of god… god aint helping as shown by the problem of evil we gots to take things into our own hands but the worse of em r the athiests that believe we shouldn’t…? why?!?! “some thing just shouldnt be messed with”… what are you smoking? and can i have some?!
The reason those people don’t want us to advance is simply because of their fear of change. People hate to see their balanced organized world change into something they can’t predict.
So… I guess you don’t believe in taking any kind of medication, including inoculations because you believe if God wanted you not to get sick, he would have made you resistant to everything?
I believe that God gave us the imagination to come up with medical science.
yea and if god hated abortions, he wood hav made a super uterus so women could hav babies wenevr they felt lik it, but lifes a bitch so get ovr it
Yep…god is an imaginary friend you have, and you believe in fairy tales.
if god wanted us to be happy he wouldnt have made retards like u but he did, so shut up about your imaginary friend and his fairy tales
The BBC covered it in April: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7354458.stm
if god didn’t want us to develop the technology to regrow limbs he never would have allowed us to develop the technology to regrow limbs…
He has a point……if God didn’t want us to deveop that technology he wouldn’t have let us….jesussaves you phail sorry *shakes head in extreme disapproval*
Cool news coming from the world of science. I hope this technology can help a lot of people out.
Old news from 2005. And not really true then
“An embarrassed BBC has backtracked on a “worldwide exclusive” featuring a man whose finger was “regrown” after being lost in an accident, following a backlash from scientists suggesting it was unlikely to be true.
Matthew Price, the BBC’s New York correspondent claimed that scientists had used “pixie dust” to help Lee Spievak, from Ohio, regrow the tip of his finger which was lost in 2005 after being hit by the propeller of a model airplane at the toy shop where he worked.
… the claims had not been substantiated by any kind of scientific publication, had not been subjected to peer review and that many of those featured in it had substantial commercial interests.
It has also emerged that exactly the same claims had been published in American media outlets in February 2007 – again featuring Lee Spievak.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3866743.ece
What is really interesting is the use of stem cells. If they crack that code, it could be as huge as when DNA sequences were discovered. The human body is just like a computer… all you need is the right hacks to get it to do what you want. These hacks could be drugs, forms of therapy, or new surgeries.
JesusSaves – actually god gave us the knowledge to build technology that could regrow limbs. He’s master plan was , that a limb would be regrow , this article would be written and that you would post that comment , and the all world will know how stupid u are :)
The heart is’nt a very complex organ, its basically just a pump and i’ve an article in a science magazine that a scientist where able grow a pig heart in a lab.
God doesnt exist you fools
well said thanks :D
Amazing over 100 years ago people didn’t know how to properly do surgery now look at us… regrowing limbs… and the new super computers broke the Petaflop barrier I wonder how far we’ll advance in the next 100.. hell in the next 50 years
Amazing over 100 years ago people didn’t know how to properly do surgery now look at us… regrowing limbs… and the new super computers broke the Petaflop barrier I wonder how far we’ll advance in the next 100.. hell in the next 50 years
lol its true our advances have accelerated … you never know nuclear fusion could have a breakthrough in a moment
they dont know how to perform surgeries even today, look at http://www.emptynosesyndrome.org to figure out why. sadly but true.
Can they make me grow a girl sex organ? that way I’d be hermaphrodite!
hell yeah, i agree with McLovin. Once we get nuclear fusion we’re gonna be fuckin unstoppable… space travel? pfft no problem, we just make the energy along the way
thats why they call me Mclovin, once we got nuclear fusion all da hippies will stfu and we will totally pwn on noobs :D
This is amazing.
Let’s stand and give those boys and girls a hand.
Top notch work.
That is just insane. I wonder what this will mean for amputees from the Iraq war, and other disabled folks? Could this have the same effect on nerves?
If you were paralyzed could this same technology be used to regrow the dead nerves that are causing you to be paralyzed?
This is good… but what about when the zombie apocalypse happens?
REGENERATING ZOMBIES =O
The ninja robot pirate zombies?!?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA nano
BALLS!
BALLS~ FIRST!
BALLS!
hi
n6e4rjifujsnlpio
good luck
guys, 10 years max, hopefully it will come up ;)
Eh, screw nuclear fusion! Though, It’s alot cleaner than other forms of engineered energy, it’s just that it leaves a fucking big ass footprint on this space-floating rock! The real solution will emerge when we actually imply that relativity theorem into reality, innovate on that principle and other future theories, and build some shit that’ll turn energy into fucking matter man! Yeah it sounds like sci-fi, but that’s what I reckon would only allow us to sustain enduring long space flight and not worry bout raw material depleting entirely on this star left-over object we live on. Everything is made up of energy anyways.
What the hell are you talking about? Nuclear Fusion would be clean energy, and more energy that we would ever need. We haven’t figured it out quite yet…
Nuclear FISSION is the one with all the waste problems… and those are even getting sorted out by some really smart people.
Yeah like God, like, fuck yeah! Like, if it weren’t for god, like, I wouldn’t have this keyboard cuz it was made by God! Like, Like, like, *head explodes*.
Awsome, finally a useful medical breakthrough. Let’s get this to market NOW!