While modern medicine has made leaps and bounds in the field of tissue and organ reconstruction over the years, it is still limited by one major drawback: Human beings don’t have spare parts.
If a car-accident survivor needs a reconstructed jaw, for instance, surgeons must build it from a piece of the patient’s fibula bone and the surrounding soft tissue and blood vessels, in a procedure known as autografting.
Using stem cells derived from dental pulp
Autografting takes a heavy toll on the body and can often lead to medical complications.
Prof. Shulamit Levenberg’s bioengineering team at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has introduced a better way.
Using stem cells derived from dental pulp (the soft tissue inside the tooth), along with capillary-forming endothelial cells, they generated blood vessels for enhanced tissue remodeling and repair.
Working with Prof. Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic of Columbia University, Levenberg’s team took the concept of implantable bone tissue to a new level –reducing the need to harvest soft tissue and blood vessels to support organ reconstruction.
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