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Finnish Patient Gets New Jaw from His Own Stem Cells

Posted by Soulskill on Sun Feb 03, 2008 09:25 AM
from the close-the-organ-banks dept.
Medicine Science
An anonymous reader writes with news out of Finland, where a patient's upper jaw was replaced with bone cultivated from stem cells and grown inside the patient himself. We discussed other advances in stem cell research a few months ago. Quoting: "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."
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Submission: Finnish patient gets new jaw from own stem cells by Anonymous Coward
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Finnish Patient Gets New Jaw from His Own Stem Cells 50 Comments More /

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  • Reminds me of Alien vs Pred (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A jaw growing in his abdomen? I've seen that film before...

  • Bill Gates v2.0 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Sunday February 03 2008, @09:32AM (#22281920) Homepage Journal
    I have no doubt that Bill Gates has had himself cloned, or at least all his organs and tissues, for when his own parts wear out. Stashed around the world, as insurance against laws banning cloning.

    And if it's not viable yet, they'll just keep cloning him until they get it right.

    I know that if I had $100B, that's how I'd spend it.
  • Does this mean I can have a second wee-wee?
    • Surely you could just reposition the large dick growing from your forehead?

        • Re:New Body Parts (Score:5, Funny)

          by ehrichweiss (706417) on Sunday February 03 2008, @10:44AM (#22282322)
          This reminds me of an animation I saw on a "movie" called "Too Outrageous Animation" where a guy kept praying to Saint Martin to grant 4 wishes and his nagging wife said she wanted his body covered with cocks(fingers, tongue, elbows, etc.). St. Martin granted the wish and the husband was so enraged that he said he wanted his wife covered in vaginas. That wish was granted and then they both saw they could never go out in public and so they wanted none, the wish was granted. Then they realized they had zero sexual organs and wanted their old ones back; the wish was granted. The moral of the story was: Instead of asking for cocks and cunts, ask for brains instead.
          • "The moral of the story was: Instead of asking for cocks and cunts, ask for brains instead"

            So the sequel was a zombie movie?
  • I have a mandibular excess and a maxillary deficiency (meaning my jawbone is too big and my upper face area is too small), which leads me to grind my teeth, get some major TMJ pain, and end up with ruined and crooked teeth. I've looked at all the surgeries (major, like taking your jaw OUT of your mouth entirely), and they didn't seem worth the risk. The long term problem is I'll lose all my teeth. I was the freak with the toothbrush in school, who flossed and brushed and rinsed 3 times a day. Today I'm the root canal and filling king, because of the jaw issue.

    When stem cells are available to regrow teeth, it will take off. The problem is that I expect the ADA (that's the lobbying group to keep dentists expensive and rare, like the AMA is a lobbying group to reduce the supply of doctors and rape the patients' wallets) will fight it tooth and nail. They'll do it under a mask of "religion" by a group controlled by them, but it will happen.

    Here, again, we see a market phenomenon that will either be over-regulated by the government so that it takes too long and is too expensive to bring to market, or we'll see a complete destruction of a huge opportunity to fix problems. I am willing to take a risk to deal with the teeth issue today, and I'm probably going to have to do it in India or China because I know that we won't get any favor here if it competes with the strong lobbying cartels, like the crooked dentists (or the doctors, or the CPAs, or any number of groups who have "associations" to harm consumers with bad legislation).

    • Re:It'll take off when cosmetic replacement is her (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Watson Ladd (955755) on Sunday February 03 2008, @10:27AM (#22282206)
      Do you really think the ADA will be against a procedure that requires much oral surgery, and associated fees? They don't make money off people without teeth, so it is their best interest to encourage you to keep them.
        • Where on earth do you have it from that fluoride weakens teeth? I've never heard anything like that. What I learned from chemistry is that fluoride strengthens the enamel.
          Besides, everyone knows the fluoridation of water is a commie plot to impurify our precious bodily fluids.

        • The ADA backs flouride in toothpastes -- the very chemical that weakens teeth.

          [citation needed]

          • Unfortunately I am on my cell phone PDA (where I browse and post to slashdot from regularly) so I can't do an easy Google search. Please double check my spelling here, but look up the report by Dr. Hardy Limeback regarding skeletal fluorosis. Limeback was a shill for the Canadian Dental Association (Canada's lobbying group) regarding fluoridation support, but has since changed his mind. I believe his changeover happened in the late 90s, but I stay on top of what he has been writing. Since he has "come o
            • Sidenote: I also stopped consuming sugar and many products which sugarize in the mouth (many wheat products, some corn products, etc). This may have something to do with having a healthier mouth!

              Given that sugar can be directly associated with just about every common disease from which man suffers, lowering your sugar intact will absolutely result in a healthier body and mouth. Most nutritional research indicates low caloric diets result in both healthy bodies and younger looking skin and hair, and a longer

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Lord Ender (156273)

              I stopped drinking fluoridated water 8 years ago (and stopped using fluoride-based toothpaste), and my lifetime problem with my teeth has turned around significantly... Sidenote: I also stopped consuming sugar

              Sidenote? You have got to be fucking kidding me.

              I've been drinking fluoride-water and using fluoride-toothpaste my entire life, and I have never had a single cavity. I'm not implying that my anecdote is any less meaningless than yours, but mine doesn't come with any sidenotes that are more significant

    • Re:It'll take off when cosmetic replacement is her (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ScrewMaster (602015) on Sunday February 03 2008, @11:30AM (#22282646)
      Well, as an American citizen who is watching his country's slow fall from being the leader in technology and scientific research to a relative backwater, I'd say it's a good thing that other nations are investing more and more in science, so that when the time comes I'll be able to fly somewhere to get state-of-the-art treatment if I should ever need it.

  • Dentists have been doing this for years (Score:5, Informative)

    by teethdood (867281) on Sunday February 03 2008, @11:03AM (#22282438)
    IAADWDI - I Am a Dentist Who Does Implants

    There is no such thing as an "upper jaw." We have various bones forming the base of the skull and associated teeth structures (aka maxilla) and a lower jaw (aka mandible).

    Dentists have been using stem cells for years. In certain situations when there are not enough bone to place dental implants, dentists would place bonegrafts mixed in with blood drawn from the hip marrow. You get around 5-10 stem cells for every million blood cells but that's all it takes to convert the bonegraft into the patient's own bone (the stem cells become osteoblasts). The only difference in this study versus what we have been doing is that they place the bonegraft with stem cells into the stomach for osteoconduction versus us placing the material into place right off the bat. Typical wait times for us is only 6 months before the bone is deemed solid enough for implant placement.

  • And in other news (Score:5, Funny)

    by loafula (1080631) on Sunday February 03 2008, @11:14AM (#22282510) Journal
    The pope just shit a brick

  • Bad tag (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dirtside (91468) on Sunday February 03 2008, @11:23AM (#22282598) Journal
    What bonehead tagged this "whatcouldpossiblygowrong"? That tag is for describing situations where some kind of decision could easily have unforeseen consequences affecting numerous people. What could possibly go wrong here is that this guy could, at worst, die. This one guy.

    Stop overusing that tag! </rant>

  • any pics? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by WormholeFiend (674934) on Sunday February 03 2008, @12:05PM (#22282892)
    Of the proto-jaw as it's taken out of the abdomen?
  • A woman gets badly burned, and they graft skin from her husband's ass to rebuild her face. After the series of operations, she looks great.
    She says, "Honey, how can I ever repay you?"
    He says, "I get paid back every time I see your mother kiss you on the cheek."
  • He works together with some ostheopath.. eh.. ist, well, a bone surgeon anyway, who makes these 'scaffolds' out of (dead) coral, cause it has a structure that's perfect for the injection of cells. He lives on Aruba, you see. So that's why. Don't know any more about it though - *mumble*.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by cbart387 (1192883)
      Don't click link. Page has nasty javascript and is not related to the article one bit!
          • Sorry, my bad. I didn't noticed it. I'm not slashbot, it was just a mistake.
            • No biggie. When I first read the article a moderator had modded the post positive without checking the link. I was trying to bring attention to that. Unfortunely they have modded me positive which will probably lead others to the link so I failed :(.
    • ah-hA!

      Good one!

      Mod this one the fuck up. Everyone else replying is a liar.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ScrewMaster (602015)
      Wow, they didn't even kill an unborn baby

      Cut it out. Please, just stop it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It's a relevant comment, Alternative stem cell technology does have the potential to intrude upon embryo stem cell research and usurp its importance in the field of medical care. Why should we stop discussing the potential of one technology to replace another, highly controversial one? And why in God's name do we scream "please, stop" at one controvery while we engage in several other equally hot topics (that are nearer and dearer to geeks than fetuses)? "Kuill an unborn baby"? I've seen equally incindiary

        • Re:Wow, they didn't even kill an unborn baby (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ScrewMaster (602015) on Sunday February 03 2008, @11:18AM (#22282558)
          I was not screaming "STOP" at the controversy. I was screaming "STOP" at yet another repeated falsehood. I am perfectly willing to discuss the "controversy" but not with such outrageous emotional overtones.

          I have nothing against working multiple lines of research: one or both will pay off handsomely (or maybe another effort that's not even been thought of yet, but will likely benefit from current progress.) But the "killing babies" argument is getting old and tired, and is not relevant because nobody kills babies for the express purpose of acquiring stem cells. That's just a lie, pure and simple. They're discarded embryos that have no hope of ever being born ... this is just my own opinion, but if I'd had a mother that didn't want me, had aborted me and left me for dead, I'd rather have ended up in a research program than a medical incinerator. Maybe then someone else who might otherwise have died, or suffered horribly, would have some chance at life.

          Nobody wants to deal with the real issue of why there are so many non-viable embryos available for research purposes in the first place. What? That's a complex psycho-socio-economic problem that has no easy answer and can't be solved by blowing up abortion clinics or passing a few laws? Huh. How about that for controversy. Perhaps we need to rethink some basic aspects of our culture and figure out where we went wrong. This so-called "controversy" over stem cell research is a symptom of some deeper issues. Issues that, I might add, aren't going to disappear just because our President doesn't understand that his moral sense is too simplistic to provide effective guidance in this area (among others.)

          I get just as torqued off when people make similar irrational commentary on other equally-hot topics. So calling me a hypocrite is a bit off: I just want people to learn to think. Only then does a reasoned response that might actually improve matters become possible. Otherwise everyone is just stroking their egos and refusing to learn anything.

          Look, this same technique is applied to many different issues. Take illegal immigration. As soon as anyone brings up the idea of enforcing the law as written, some asshole immediately starts crying "racism! racism!". At that point, any rational discussion becomes impossible, because anyone who believes we should enforce our own laws has now been labeled a bigot. Doesn't matter what the facts are any longer.

          So, if you want to have a decent dialog about the use of discarded embryos in stem cell research, keep the "killing babies" commentary to yourself. It serves little purpose other than to polarize the participants and eliminate any possibility of rational discourse. The people who are performing this research (the ones who originally used embryonic cells) are not baby killers, not abortion doctors, they're researchers with a genuine desire to advance our scientific knowledge and help people. Such deliberate and malicious mischaracterization of others generally means that someone has a fatally flawed perspective that cannot be supported by reality ... and knows it.

          • Facts? You're in need of a few. (Score:2, Interesting)

            by Anonymous Coward
            The debate is centered on ethics. Most of the facts aren't in dispute, they just get ignored.

            The facts simply aren't reasonably in dispute. We all know that a zygote is an immature homo sapien. We know that it doesn't have brain function until considerably later and isn't communicative until well after it's born. So the debate is whether or not that's the same sort of "human" that belongs in the term "human rights." That is, whether it is our intelligence or our humanity that makes us somehow worthy of

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by AndGodSed (968378)
            First off: I am a Christian, and anti abortion.

            Before you cast my comment aside, let me say that in many respects I agree with you.

            Crying "killing babies" is a mantra created for influencing the masses. I realize that there is a huge gray area as far as abortion goes. Sometimes it is necessitated because the mothers life is in danger, other times the fetus is dead.

            Killing the fetus for the simple expedient of harvesting stem-cells makes me uncomfortable, and I would vote against it if ever given the chance.

            • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

              by Rankiri (1002633)
              Just to make you feel more comfortable, it's called embryonic, not fetal cell stem research. They call them embryos on the earliest stages of growth, generally from the moment of fertilization until the end of the 8th week of gestational age. They call them fetuses thereafter. The embryos used for harvesting human embryonic stem cells are typically four or five days old. They look like a hollow microscopic ball of cells and called the blastocyst.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by ScrewMaster (602015)
              Well, I'm atheist and I'm anti-abortion, mostly because I see most of them as being the result of irresponsible behavior, and a further unwillingness to take responsibility for one's actions. I would think that most people don't believe abortion is a good idea, it mostly comes down to what criteria get applied for it to be permitted. Some would say when the mother's life is at risk, some would say when a woman is impregnated after a rape, others say it's the mother's choice ... others say never, ever. As us

          • Re:Wow, they didn't even kill an unborn baby (Score:4, Insightful)

            by ZombieRoboNinja (905329) on Sunday February 03 2008, @02:12PM (#22283878)
            >>Take illegal immigration. As soon as anyone brings up the idea of enforcing the law as written, some asshole immediately starts crying "racism! racism!". At that point, any rational discussion becomes impossible, because anyone who believes we should enforce our own laws has now been labeled a bigot. Doesn't matter what the facts are any longer.

            Well, as a parallel example, some states still have anti-sodomy laws on the record. If you were to recommend "enforcing those laws as written," don't you think people would be right to decry you as anti-gay?

            The laws already on the record aren't automatically morally neutral. They may very well be racist laws. You certainly don't have to try too hard to find laws that WERE explicitly racist in our nation's recent history. If you're going to argue in favor of current immigration policy, you're going to have to come up with a better argument for why the current laws are acceptable than merely that they're the current laws.
            • {sigh} you, like most other posters here, completely missed the point. What I'm trying to get across is that laws will not get changed in any intelligent way unless we stop calling each other names, stop trying to scare each other, and look at what's really going on. I don't care what particular issue you want to talk about: immigration, stem-cells, abortion, foreign policy, War on Drugs, War in Iraq, TSA, Copyright/Patent Reform, you name it.

              So excuse me, but the fact that those immigration laws are on
              • >>So far as laws against Sodomy and Suicide, and unenforceable laws is concerned, the answer is that they're unenforceable and consequently irrelevant to this discussion.

                Our current immigration laws ARE unenforceable. Our economy is currently dependent upon having a ton of illegal immigrant workers. Moreover, much like those sodomy laws, they've never BEEN enforced.

                >>Furthermore, I don't really understand how you can call a nation that accepts people from literally every country on the planet as
        • The word "unborn" has about as much relevance to reality as the word "undead".
          They are not words one uses to have an intelligent discussion with.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Nullav (1053766)
          Why put embryos on a pedestal? No one gets mad when someone has liposuction. Won't somebody please think of the poor fat cells being slaughtered? What makes a cell unique enough to get this kind of attention, is it that the cell's DNA differs from that of the host? Then I suppose it's our duty to inform all those oncologists that what they're doing is wrong.
          (Really, what do you think would happen to most of the embryos being used for stem cell research? At least they're going to something useful.)

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by BrentH (1154987)
      This is just a scientific trial, and they have social healthcare in Finland, so it didnt cost him a penny.

      • Re:How much did it cost? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by fbjon (692006) on Sunday February 03 2008, @10:41AM (#22282302) Homepage Journal
        It still costs money, regardless of who pays for it.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by zippthorne (748122)
              If he was willing to give money freely to that cause, he wouldn't need to be taxed for it, would he? Of course, we'll never really know, since the tax was most likely implemented before he had any say in it, anyway.

              I'll never understand why people vote with their fingers what they're not willing to vote for with their wallets.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by nlitement (1098451)
        Actually, it didn't cost him a cent. We have euros, you see.

    • How much did it cost him/her? $500k? $1M?
      In a newspaper article I read, it said it was more expensive than a transplant from hip bone or other traditional operation, but on the other hand the hospital bed time and recovery was drastically reduced. Not sure how much the total cost panned out because of that.
    • I bet they got a big fat research grant for it.
    • How long till this, in some form, is used to increase breast size? It seems growing a jaw would be more difficult than growing new/more breast tissue, and they would be "real". Just inject some "breast stem cells" directly into the breast and watch em grow :). I for one welcome our new larger breast female overlords.
      • How long till this, in some form, is used to increase breast size? It seems growing a jaw would be more difficult than growing new/more breast tissue, and they would be "real".

        Women with real breasts larger than a D-cup frequently seek breast reduction surgery, natural breast tissue isn't strong enough to support that much weight in an aesthetically appealing way. When science comes up with a way to make a 40 year old's natural breasts perky again, then plastic surgeons will have to rethink their business

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