World's First Biodegradable Joint Implant Grows New Joints 102
cylonlover writes "Joint implants should always be made of materials like titanium, so they can last the lifetime of the patient ... right? Well, not according to researchers at Finland's Tampere University of Technology. They've developed a product known as RegJoint, which is reportedly the world's first biodegradable joint implant. Unlike permanent implants, it allows the patient's bone ends to remain intact, and it creates a new joint out of their own tissue."
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Did anyone else think... (Score:3, Funny)
They were talking about Marijuana?
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Black swan. Only a fool would answer no to that question.
Besides, some of us are high right now, you insensitive clod.
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First thought through my head was "Isn't it illegal to grow joints?"
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Re:Porn Use? (Score:4, Funny)
If your Penis has joints in it, you've got more serious concerns.
Re:Porn Use? (Score:5, Funny)
If your Penis has joints in it, you've got more serious concerns.
Like which axial direction to articulate in? One direction could lead to a new baby while the other will have you questioning the bars you've been going to.
Re:Porn Use? (Score:5, Informative)
"If your Penis has joints in it, you've got more serious concerns."
Like maybe having too many genes in common with chimpanzees or gorillas?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baculum [wikipedia.org]
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rgb
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Hmmm, fact of the day -- a new word. Now to use it in a sentence with a random stranger. "Hey, is that a baculum in your pants or are you just glad to see me?"
The correct answer is... "both".
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Or, as Jay-Z once poetically put it, "If you got penis joint problems, I feel bad for you son. I got 99 problems but a penis joint ain't one."
The details (Score:5, Interesting)
So I searched around and found this. http://www.scaffdex.com/sites/default/files/RegJoint_IfU_rev_0_1.pdf [scaffdex.com]
I thought I knew polymers, but my biochemistry is a bit weak. 96L/4D poly-L/D-lactide copolymer fiber. Seems to be porous, is that the key to making a bodily joint?
Apparently it loses it strength as quickly as within 15 to 24 weeks and then completely loses its strength within a few years. Meanwhile, your body is allowed a framework to develop around after physical trauma.
Re:The details (Score:5, Informative)
Hard joints grind your bone ends into bits. Hundreds of millions of little bits. It does things to the immune system (which attacks solid bone in such situations after being fooled by lots of tiny bits of bone) and creates extra wear on any cartlidge, tendons or anything else in the vicinity. We are bags of mostly water so that stuff doesn't stay put. The life of the joint depends on both it's structure and the damage to the surrounds, which can be measured in inches/centimetres so the replacement joint has to be a lot larger.
At the time making the surface of a joint very porous and relatively soft was the way things were going since it's now expected that people with artificial joints will live for more than a decade after the joint is put in place. The old style of using very hard materials in direct contact with bone doesn't last long enough.
Re:The details (Score:5, Funny)
I'd rather have some kind of hybrid, like a titanium kneecap with this polymer connecting the end joints.
Dammit, if I'm going to get body parts replaced when I'm older I want to be able to knee someone in the head and have it sound like an aluminum bat hitting a soft ball. *tink!*
Re:The details (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather have some kind of hybrid, like a titanium kneecap with this polymer connecting the end joints.
Dammit, if I'm going to get body parts replaced when I'm older I want to be able to knee someone in the head and have it sound like an aluminum bat hitting a soft ball. *tink!*
So the spectator sport of cybernetic combat will actually take the form of geriatric men brawling.
I still think it will sell, though.
Re:The details (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why aren't we already using bone made bones? (Score:3)
I wonder what's stoppiong us from creating bones made of bone with stem cells.
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Due to the fact that stem cell research is being restricted or banned, in various degrees, across the world, and that reduces the number of researchers, resources and research avenues dedicated to it.
Yes. Sorry. I was being sarcastic but went too far in the obfuscation.
What I meant is: Why in hell are are we accepting living in a shittier world just because we've decided not to let scientists keeping us moving forward? Why are we so afraid of knowledge? Why are we so damn stupid?
Fortunately the human race isn't competing with an alien race of similar opportunities but less inclined to ignore them in favor of irrationality.
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in which country is stem cell research banned or restricted ?
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really ? last I heard they only refused to finance "human cell studies" with federal funds ...
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meant _human stemm cell studies_
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell_laws_and_policy_in_the_United_States#Federal_law [wikipedia.org]
No federal law ever did ban stem cell research in the United States, but only placed restrictions on funding and use, under Congress's power to spend.
The Corporations can spend $$$ on research if they want. Depending on what sort of stuff they want to do they might have to be careful about which US State they do it in.
But hey don't let facts get in the way of your religious beliefs and prejudice.
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But hey don't let facts get in the way of your religious beliefs and prejudice.
On March 9, 2009, President Barack Obama lifted, by Executive Order, the Bush administration's eight-year ban on federal funding of embryonic stem research. http://usliberals.about.com/od/stemcellresearch/a/ObamaEmbyBan.htm [about.com]
Maybe you should look at your own prejudiced religious beliefs before you accuse others.
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There's a distinct difference between embryonic stem cell research and adult stem cell research. It's sad that you can't see that there are two different things here.
Yes the difference is adult stem cells are extremely difficult to harvest and not nearly as useful.
Frothy Mix for President (Score:2)
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The Corporations can spend $$$ on research if they want.
No. The way the law was written, if a corporation decided to do embryonic stem cell research, they would then lose ALL federal support for the entire company> This effectively shut down the stem cell research because of the financial impact
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Man, you are so full of shit.
What they did was try to prevent tax dollars being used to harvest unborn babies.
There are tons of companies doing stem cell research, maybe you heard of one in (*gasp* - Republican) Texas recently that was doing illegal treatments of patients.
Turns out there are many better ways to make stem cells than from embryos. Necessity being a mother and all that.
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What they did was try to prevent tax dollars being used to harvest unborn babies.
President Bush opposed embryonic stem cell research on ideological grounds. He exercised his first presidential veto on July 19, 2006 when he refused to allow H.R. 810 to become law. http://usliberals.about.com/od/stemcellresearch/a/HR810.htm [about.com]
That's got nothing to do with unborn babies, he opposed using the waste cells from IVF treatments.
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Yep. He wants excess embryos from IVF to be incinerated as medical waste the way God intended. I'm not sure what verse commanded that...
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citation, please ?
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"'stem cell research using the human embryo"
Pretty narrow limitation, I would say ... nobody banned research using mouse embrions.
The whole debate is beyond ludicrous, all is based on what we imagine we might be able to do with biotech, not on what we actually do with it: from the fine wikipedia article "India banned in 2004 reproductive cloning, permitted therapeutic cloning." ... good thing they did not ban traveling above warp 4.5 in inhabited star systems ...
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The claim was that there are countries that "ban or restrict", and the request was for a list of that "banned or restricted". These countries restrict research.
from the fine wikipedia article "India banned in 2004 reproductive cloning, permitted therapeutic cloning."
And did you notice that I didn't include India? If you want to criticize the list that I provided then look only at the countries in my list. I specifically tailored it to not include countries that only restricts or bans cloning. This is why I gave the list to begin with instead of just linking to the Wikipedia site, something that took me less than
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Lets see nearly all of the countries inside the EU, the US, and Australia. Which eats up the majority of the R&D spending budgets globally.
Leading research in the field is currently being done in China in less than optimal non-state-of-the-art facilities thanks to idiot religious fanatics now allowing embryonic stem cell research.
The US has a loophole that allows using lines of stem cells created prior to their own ban, but it more often than not leads the US researchers off chasing wild geese. Instead
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I don't understand one thing: why not do it with embryonic cells from mice first ? or from monkeys ... why is it so important to use human cells right from the beginning ?
the restrictions on federal funding are not about "sanctity of life", they are about the slippery slope of experimenting on humans
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No, the real reason are religious beliefs.
They use a slippery slope argument.
The thing is, you're not experimenting on humans. They wont' even allow research on IVF leftovers, which are human embryo's that we literally toss into the bin. If they're going to be binned anyways...
Mice AND Monkeys have been done already. In the 90's. They developed a lot of the techniques to manipulate the genes and stem cell stages from animal testing. You will never hear about the fact that its already gone through animal tes
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so, they can culture mice and monkey organs already ? ... or even simple tissue that has some medical use ? ... I guess not, because "they" can't even persuade a stem cell to do anything, or even know for sure that stem cells can be persuaded to do anything, or even what the blasted stem cells are ... this is the same as "cloning": there was no cloning done with animals yet, only transplated nuclei into ova, which _is not cloning_ in any sense of the word, because there is very important DNA that exists out
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One company has already made genetically identical clones in china already. They even gave some rabbits human DNA at one of the government labs. That one kicked up quite a fuss, I'm not sure why you didn't hear about it.
Probably something to do with you sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "nananana I can't hear you".
A lot of the problem is the cutting edge research IS NOT happening in your back yard so you know nothing about it nowadays.
As for mice, they've succesfully grown and transplanted whol
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Only human stem cell research is banned/restricted. "Artificial" stem cell research is in the works.
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Fortunately the human race isn't competing with an alien race of similar opportunities but less inclined to ignore them in favor of irrationality.
...and what makes you think we aren't?
Re:Why aren't we already using bone made bones? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, it is only embryonic stem cells that ever have an issue here with banning/restriction. That isn't nearly as much of a setback now as it was 3-4 years ago. Even if you ignore the ethical issues, the setback is probably worth it - it has accelerated the development of techniques for "undifferentiated" adult stem cells so they can create more cell lineages than they could have naturally. Why is this a big deal? What kind of rejection issues will you have to face when your new transplant comes from another person's tissue? Now, what if it comes from your own? That's the advantage.
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Ahem: broken window fallacy. [wikipedia.org] We would be further along without roadblocks, progress in other areas notwithstanding.
While I do applaud finding silver linings, it's more helpful to identify the root cause and address that. It is good that we are making progress, both in those other areas, and also in the ability to work with embryonic lines.
Finally, the argument for stopping the embryonic work was not "so that we can develop better methods to help people"; it was "sky fairy said no!" (i.e., a religious "arg
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Why in hell are are we accepting living in a shittier world just because we've decided not to let scientists keeping us moving forward?
Because, sometimes, you have to force them to "work around the problem" just like the internet works around damage. A very good example of this revolves around the G.W.Bush executive order cutting stem cell research funds because the only stem cells being researched were from aborted fetuses. Now we've got the ability to revert skin cells back to stem cells becuase the scientists were forced to look at the alternatives instead of taking the easiest route.
It wont always work but someone will come up with tru
Re:Why aren't we already using bone made bones? (Score:5, Informative)
Basically it's a chicken and egg problem: the stem cells need a good structure to grow in but the structure needs to be created by the cells. A solution is to create an implant which allows the cells to grow within it and then gracefully degrades as it is replaced by the natural bone/collagen etc. which seems to be what these guys have done.
It's a difficult (materials science) problem because there are a lot of requirements. For example it needs to be as tough as bone but break down after a reasonable amount of time. It needs to be non-toxic (before and after breaking down). It of course needs to be cheap(ish) and reasonably easy to mass produce. Anyway there's much more information here [wikipedia.org].
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Technically it doesn't have to be as hard as bone if the recipient wears a brace or stays off the affected area. Anything that would have the other properties will likely be strong enough and hard enough to support the regrowth period.
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Basically it's a chicken and egg problem
There is no chicken and egg problem. Dinasaurs layed eggs, and chickens are descended from dinasaurs. The egg came first and everyone should know that by now.
Besides, who has chicken for breakfast?
Unfortunately, I saw a poll just this morning that said over half of people thought the chicken came first. There sure are a lot of uneducated people.
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Chicken Biscuit Sandwich (Score:2)
Besides, who has chicken for breakfast?
Anybody who goes into a Chick-fil-A between 0900 and 1020.
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Besides, who has chicken for breakfast?
http://www.bojangles.com/menu/item/20/cajun-filet-biscuit [bojangles.com]
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I wonder what's stoppiong us from creating bones made of bone with stem cells.
Republicans.
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Or bone transplants,. I imagine it should be a lot easier to get a body to accept foreign but similar bone then some of the other organs they transplant regularly.
But possibly the titanium bone is actually an improvement?
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With bones come marrow and an entire immune system. It can probably be done but due to the risks, it's nothing like preferable.
Besides that, joint replacement is not usually done because the bone failed, generally it's the cartilage that's the problem.
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Such short memories.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/02/07/215239/fracture-putty-can-heal-a-broken-bone-in-days [slashdot.org]
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Doubt there's anything really stopping us, I've seen a science piece of a patient with a new jaw from his own stem cells.
link to reuters story [reuters.com]
Wait, what? (Score:2, Funny)
Dude, I totally misread the headline. Thought it was something about joints that multiply. Bummer, man.
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The body normally 'allocates' bone growth in response to physical stress, which is why those astronauts lazing around in zero G come back with bones like your great grandmother; but you presumably don't want to stress a comparatively delicate implanted polymer scaffold more than absolutely necessary until it has regrown into a proper bone structure(worst cases, the thing either dissolves witho
Re:Implants are not titanium (Score:5, Informative)
Joint implants are not titanium. No, no no. That's a myth that won't die.
No, sorry it is you that is mistaken. Medical grade titanium (Ti6Al4V Grade 5) is widely used for joint implants because it is biocompatible and MR safe. ASTM-75 is only classified as MR Conditional at best so its effect on MR image quality and localized tissue heating has not yet been fully established.
Just do a search on Titanium joint implant and you'll see they do in fact exist and are quite popular
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Unless the person is cremated, I seriously doubt it...
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Just do a search on Titanium joint implant and you'll see they do in fact exist and are quite popular
I have a friend with a nickel allergy who just got a Ti/polyethylene knee replacement. Unlike TFS's assertion, though, the doc said it will probably only last 20 years.
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You're dead wrong. I'm loaded with titanium after being crushed by a truck.
Two words - Biologically Inert. It doesn't set off the immune system. This is also why most piercing studs/jewelery are made of titanium, the chance of rejection by the body's defenses is practically nil.
Only for non weight bearing joints (Score:2)
finally, a starting point to a amputee repair (Score:1)
I know not many people think about this but I do everyday. This is a starting point of a possible limb replacement. (of course, not muscle, etc.)
It's actually pretty miraculous if you ask me.
Where can I sign up? (Score:2)
I've been hearing about cool stuff like this for years. When can an ordinary person get it?
Biodegradeable (Score:2)