Thursday, May 18, 2017

Bones, Stem Cells and Bridging the Gap

California's $3 billion stem cell research effort chalked up a small score yesterday with the announcement that a $5.2 million investment is making progress towards development of a therapy to regenerate broken bones. 
Writing on the the state stem cell agency's blog, Karen Ring, social media manager for the agency, said,
"Scientists from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have developed a new stem cell-based technology in animals that mends broken bones that can’t regenerate on their own. Their research was published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine and was funded in part by a CIRM Early Translational Award."
The award went to Dan Gazit and Hyun Bae at Cedars. Their year one and two progress reports involving the adult stem cell therapy can be found at the link in the above paragraph. 
Ring's  blog item also carried a nifty graphic on the work and a link to a video on the research. 
Ring wrote,
 "Over two million bone grafts are conducted every year to treat bone fractures caused by accidents, trauma, cancer and disease. In cases where the fractures are small, bone can repair itself and heal the injury. In other cases, the fractures are too wide and grafts are required to replace the missing bone.
"It sounds simple, but the bone grafting procedure is far from it and can cause serious problems including graft failure and infection. People that opt to use their own bone (usually from their pelvis) to repair a bone injury can experience intense pain, prolonged recovery time and are at risk for nerve injury and bone instability."

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