Regenerative Medicine/Medical Breakthroughs

[GJ]

I'm going to sticky this thread so we can have a go to place for all the most up to date medical advancements.

Let's do it this way:

Post what advancement you are interested in and ask people who come across new information about it to post links here. Don't clutter the thread with arguments or speculation (discussion is fine so long as it's on point -- relevant info about breakthroughs). Otherwise the thread becomes too difficult to navigate if it's pages of people arguing about their theories or speculating.

If any of you guys come across articles about regenerating teeth, gum, bone using stem cells or a related method, please share the link. I found articles about it dating back almost ten years, yet still nothing seems on the horizon despite most papers saying it's on the horizon.

[Lazlo]

Great idea. I'm primarily interested right now in gum tissue regeneration and black triangle fixes. Heard collagen is a good treatment to plump up gum tissue and something called IMOGAIN which available from periodontists now.

[overbiter]

Rapid Resorbable Fixation System



The Synthes Rapid Resorbable Fixation System consists of resorbable plates, meshes, screws, and tacks for craniofacial reconstruction. The implants are manufactured from 85:15 poly(L-lactide-co-glycolide). This polymer is readily resorbed by the body in 12 months.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
​​​
​​Key Features & Benefits
Resorbs in 12 months
Degrades without late inflammatory complications and foreign-body responses that have been observed with semi-crystalline structures such as poly(L-lactide)
Eliminates concerns for potential migration and translocation associated with metallic implants
Eliminates secondary surgeries for implant removal
Radiolucent polymer does not interfere with intra- or postoperative radiographs

Indications*
Intended for use in fracture repair and reconstructive procedures of the craniofacial skeleton in pediatric and adult populations.
Resorbable meshes, sheets, screws and tacks may be used in non-load-bearing applications for maintaining the relative position of, and/or containing bony fragments, bone grafts (autograft or allograft), or bone graft substitutes in reconstruction of the craniofacial or mandibular areas.



http://www.synthes.com/sites/NA/Products/Biomaterials/PorousPolyethyleneImplants/Pages/Rapid-Resorbable-Fixation-System.aspx

[Lazlo]

This looks promising, but I wonder why my perio isn't raving about it?

He does use it however. In fact I found my current perio --who can't do anythign really till braces are off by contacting an emdogain representative.

http://www.straumann.us/en/professionals/products-and-solutions/regeneration-solutions/tissue-regeneration.html

[Lazlo]

By the way I contacted the scientist Paul Shapre directly responsible for the following research:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgLzporIRb8

as well as this doctor

http://www.ivanhoe.com/channels/p_channelstory.cfm?storyid=29325

Out of the two I think Paul Sharpe is the world's leading researcher on the matter, but there's a doctor at columbia also advanced in the field.


All of them responded to my utter amazement the very next day.

I asked Paul Sharpe if bioteeth would be available by 2020.

His response: "Impossible to say, but I doubt that early."

Dr. Peter Murray: "I've given up on predictions. No idea. In a sense, stem cells are always activated when your body recovers from an injury" Don't know what the hell that means.

So I mean doesn't sound like it'll be soon. That said, there are teams around the world working on this s**t. Also, breakthroughs in hydrogels for healing look promising. And ultrasound with emdogain and stem cell injections could all help.

[PloskoPlus]

If any of you guys come across articles about regenerating teeth, gum, bone using stem cells or a related method, please share the link. I found articles about it dating back almost ten years, yet still nothing seems on the horizon despite most papers saying it's on the horizon.

I'm afraid what you'll get here is more of the same.  I looked up an article on peripheral nerve regeneration from fat cells (my damn paraesthesia!).  It droned on and on about exciting results... until I realised it was all experiments on lab animals.  I work in a biomed company (not directly involved with the biology stuff, however).  My takeaway from it is that progress is a matter of massive amounts of trial and error experiments - just brute force to find stuff that works.

I'm afraid we need another World War to see rapid progress in medicine.

[Lazlo]

http://www.jicdro.org/article.asp?issn=2231-0754;year=2010;volume=2;issue=2;spage=86;epage=91;aulast=Surana

great stuff.

[Lazlo]

also good stuff is you scroll down to how stem cells are used in periodontal generation.

guys this stuff has been experimentally demonstrated to work. It's around the corner, trust. me. I've reading a lot on this stuff now and it works.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3303525/

[Lazlo]

This is coming soon too. And it's proven to WORK. Guys the future is bright, just give it around 5 years. And we'll look better and younger with real new teeth!

http://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2014/05/researchers-use-light-to-coax-stem-cells-to-repair-teeth

[Lazlo]

Another technology that is shown to work. Would love some help deciphering the language here. How much improvement was achieved?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23533047

[Rico]

Rapid Resorbable Fixation System  - it's nothing new.... it's on the market for many years. Surgeon use this system mostly in children

I wonder why they use 'rapid' word.  12 months is not rapid.

[molestrip]

Screw fixation. Seriously, it's barbaric. There's a startup in Boston - right now - that has a resorbable bone cement. Their Youtube video shows the stuff holding hundreds of pounds of pressure. Combine that with lab grown bone, also being commercially developed right now, and you've got a revolution in craniofacial surgery. It sucks but you just can't keep waiting for the next best thing

Ten years ago, osteotomies thinned but now we can augment them. Ten years from now, no plates and you can return to a normal diet in 2-3 weeks. Also, you'll get a few different cuts and everything will be perfect, even your average surgeon down the street can do it in his sleep because it'll all be automated by companies like braces are today. It makes me so sad that I have to spend the next 50 years of my life with the compromises of the s**tty surgery available today. It's also possible that none of this stuff pans out or that it doesn't arrive as quickly and it takes 20 years to get there, not 10.

[PloskoPlus]

Screw fixation. Seriously, it's barbaric. There's a startup in Boston - right now - that has a resorbable bone cement. Their Youtube video shows the stuff holding hundreds of pounds of pressure. Combine that with lab grown bone, also being commercially developed right now, and you've got a revolution in craniofacial surgery. It sucks but you just can't keep waiting for the next best thing

Ten years ago, osteotomies thinned but now we can augment them. Ten years from now, no plates and you can return to a normal diet in 2-3 weeks. Also, you'll get a few different cuts and everything will be perfect, even your average surgeon down the street can do it in his sleep because it'll all be automated by companies like braces are today. It makes me so sad that I have to spend the next 50 years of my life with the compromises of the s**tty surgery available today. It's also possible that none of this stuff pans out or that it doesn't arrive as quickly and it takes 20 years to get there, not 10.

If it has not been demonstrated on human subjects, simply ignore it completely. 
BTW, a friend of mine who knows a thing or two about bio med, says that stem cells are to biology what the aether was to physics 100 years.  There is a good chance that they don't exist at all.  Tissue scaffolds hold far more promise.

[molestrip]

If it has not been demonstrated on human subjects, simply ignore it completely. 
BTW, a friend of mine who knows a thing or two about bio med, says that stem cells are to biology what the aether was to physics 100 years.  There is a good chance that they don't exist at all.  Tissue scaffolds hold far more promise.

It's been tested in animals and they are "pre-clinical" right now. I think you may be right, even if it all works out and they roll it out quickly by the time surgeons have figured out how to best make use of it and enough data has been collected to gamble with my life on it, well that's at least 5 years away maybe closer to 10. The gains will be offset by damage to my mouth and joints in the mean time.

Yeah my feeling on stem cells is that they won't be of much use in practice until scientists can figure out how to collect them as part of the procedure or the government figures out how to save them in scale. There's just no incentive for companies to develop technologies for using them when only tens of thousands of people have them banked.

[GJ]

If it has not been demonstrated on human subjects, simply ignore it completely. 
BTW, a friend of mine who knows a thing or two about bio med, says that stem cells are to biology what the aether was to physics 100 years.  There is a good chance that they don't exist at all.  Tissue scaffolds hold far more promise.

Does she mean they don't exist, or they don't work? They definitely exist.
http://mmqb.si.com/2014/07/30/stem-cell-treatment-nfl-sports-medicine

There's a huge incentive in sports medicine to get star players back on the field sooner, so that is likely why and where the breakthroughs will occur.