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Article: Doctors Try New Techniques to Re-grow Human Tissue.
- Article from:
- Transplant News
- Article date:
- March 1, 2007
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Transplant Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Five soldiers at a military base in Texas are about to participate in a remarkable test to see if they can re-grow portions of fingers they lost in the war in Iraq, according to a Wall St. Journal article. Doctors plan to treat the soldiers with a fine powder called extracellular matrix, harvested from pig bladders. The material, found in all animals, is the scaffolding that cells latch onto as they divide and grow into tissue and body parts.
Though it was long thought to be inert in the human body, scientists have discovered that it appears to activate latent biological processes that spur healing and regenerate tissue. It's just one example of progress in the ...