No more of those painful bone grafts to live through

Nov 25, 2014 09:28 GMT  ·  By

Broken bones may not be the worst injuries someone can suffer from, and there are a bunch of diseases that are a lot worse, but they can sure be painful, and they can also leave someone permanently handicapped or disabled.

It's no surprise, then, that there is always someone working on a better way to prevent fractures from happening, and when that fails, to better treat such injuries.

The latest breakthrough in the latter category comes from the Keele and Nottingham universities in the UK, where a team of medical researchers have created a treatment method based on nanotechnology.

We may not be capable of creating true nanites / nanobots yet, but nanoparticles are something we already have. It is such nanoparticles that form the core of the new treatment.

Nanoparticle-based fracture healing

Broken bones are easy enough to fix. Just tie a splint or put the area in a cast and all you have to do is wait for a few weeks or months.

However, shattered bones are a lot worse. And there are some parts of the skeleton that can't go in a cast at all. That's where bone grafts come in.

In a nutshell, it demands that a surgeon remove bone from another area of the body and sculpt it into a replacement for the irreparable spot.

Grafts need people to exercise, thus promoting mechanotransduction which causes a cascade effect of processes like biochemical signals, hormone release, stem cell regeneration and tissue growth, ultimately leading to the repair of the injured skeleton area.

Still, bone grafting is a painful and invasive procedure, so alternatives are always being sought after. One such alternative is magnetic nanoparticles.

Nanoparticles can be magnetically guided to affected areas

By coating magnetic nanoparticles with proteins, you can literally use magnets to guide them to the side of injury, helping to stimulate stem cell regeneration.

This will not only improve bone grafting efficiency but also provide an alternative in the cases when a skeletal disorder or other medical condition prevents grafting entirely (there is no bone to transplant).

The best part is that the method advocated by Keele and Nottingham universities in the UK doesn't need surgery at all. They are simply injected in the body.

We'll be looking forward to any new regenerative medicine methods are invented from this point onward.

Other applications for magnetic nanoparticles

Besides medicine (where cancer detection is another approach), they could be used in cleaning up oil spills and improving digital capacities of storage devices.

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Keele University Researchers helped develop the treatmentNottingham University also helped
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