Bones from Fat: Israeli Doctors Test Revolutionary Method for Bone Tissue Restoration
Israeli doctors have tested a new technology for creating bone transplants developed by their compatriots from the biotechnology company Bonus BioGroup. With this technology, bone material for the patient can be grown in the laboratory from stem cells obtained from their own adipose tissue. The technology has already passed all necessary clinical trials and will soon be used in medical institutions worldwide, becoming a minimally invasive and accessible alternative to the classical method of obtaining autologous bone transplants.
The key feature of the technology proposed by the Israelis is that now an autotransplant can be created without extracting a bone fragment from the so-called donor site (usually the tibia or iliac bone) of the patient. This method, which has been used in orthopedics until now, is essentially a full surgical intervention that only increases the burden on the patient's body.
The new technology will allow the necessary bone material to be created from fat. It works as follows. First, through a liposuction procedure, doctors obtain a fragment of the patient's own adipose tissue. Then, they isolate the so-called pluripotent stem cells, derived from the inner cell mass, which are capable of differentiating into various types of specialized cells, and place them in a bioreactor for several weeks. This device creates an environment and maintains the necessary conditions for the growth and differentiation of stem cells into cells involved in the regeneration of the required – in this case – bone tissue.
The mass obtained in laboratory conditions, which has the form of a gel, is then injected into the affected area of the bone, after which the natural process of its restoration begins. This gel-like scaffold quickly sprouts blood vessels and integrates – due to complete biological compatibility, the risk of rejection is zero. Furthermore, the bones grown in this way, as claimed by the developers, will be several times stronger than the human "analog," and due to their ability to grow, they can be used in children. They also note that the procedure itself will be much cheaper compared to the methods currently used for bone tissue regeneration.
The first to test the revolutionary method were Israeli specialists in maxillofacial surgery – using it, they performed a dozen successful operations to restore damaged jaws. Excellent results were also achieved by orthopedic surgeons at one of the Israeli hospitals, who used the new technology to fill a cavity in the patient's bone that formed as a result of an accident. In the future, it is planned to apply it to people suffering from osteoporosis, who have undergone bone resection due to cancer, and to patients with complex injuries and severe congenital bone anomalies.