Scientists in Australia from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology have found a way to regrow human bones by firing high-frequency sound waves at the stem cells, this is a potential breakthrough in regenerative medicine.
It is claimed to be more faster, more efficient, and cheaper than existing experimental methods of regrowing bone using stem cells extracted from bone marrow, and often a painful and invasive process.
Coauthor and MRIT professor Leslie Yeo stated that:“Our device is cheap and simple to use, so could easily be upscaled for treating large numbers of cells simultaneously — vital for effective tissue engineering,”
“The sound waves cut the treatment time usually required to get stem cells to begin to turn into bone cells by several days,” said Gelmi, a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow at RMIT. “This method also doesn’t require any special ‘bone-inducing’ drugs and it’s very easy to apply to the stem cells. Our study found this new approach has strong potential to be used for treating the stem cells before we either coat them onto an implant or inject them directly into the body for tissue engineering.”
How does it work?
They first take some cells from the patient and then convert them to stem cells and inject them back into the patient. Just after 10 minutes of sounds for 5 days the stem cells start to convert into bone cells and regrow the bone. The device uses sound waves to apply just the right amount of pressure in the right places to the stem cells so that it triggers the change process.
Conclusion
However, not everything is perfect as the team has a massive challenge to overcome. They need to scale up the platform massively for medical use. Though the future is definitely looking bright!
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Great blog about how technology can help with the progression of Science, especially in the field of Medicine. This sounds like an amazing technology and I am excited to see this being used by doctors across the world and save many patient lives!
It will change our world, I hope it will helps the patients all over the world and doctors will use it not only in developing countries but in the whole world. Fantastic!