We Can Now Grow Human Bones From Stem Cells
Scientists may have figured out how to grow bones in a lab, what does this mean for the future of implants?
If you break a bone, you go to the doctor and you get a cast. Then your bone heals itself. Which is actually pretty incredible if you sit around and think about it. We tend to think of bones as these rigid support systems, but they're actually made of living tissue.
Bones are constantly breaking down and remodeling themselves to adapt to your lifestyle. If you go from playing video games on your couch to marathon running, your bones are going to change to compensate.
It's pretty incredible, and scientists call this adapting: Wolff's law. So, if you just started marathon running and break a bone, you're not out of luck. The body knows exactly what to do. It produces tons of new cells at the site of the break to rebuild the bone over time.
But if you have cancer, a genetic defect, or if something really bad happens — like, a break is so bad that than the body can't heal it on its own, scientists finally have a way to repair bones that befall these situations too.
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