Artificial Organ Regrowth - NOVA scienceNOW. New Bandages Latest in Healthcare Technology - High Tech Bandages and Band-Aids. ChitoGauze (Photograph courtesy of HemCon Medical Technologies, Inc.) HemCon Medical Technologies manufactures bandages and wound dressings that harness the power of the sea. The company's products use chitosan, a biopolymer made from a component in the exoskeletons of crab, shrimp and other crustacean exoskeletons. The positively charged chitosan attracts the negatively charged outer membranes of red blood cells; when the two come into contact, localized clotting occurs.
HemCon's chitosan-coated bandages are already in use in Iraq; its latest product is ChitoGauze. Gecko Bandage (Photograph by Bob Langer and Jeff Karp, MIT) The ability of geckos to scale vertical surfaces comes from the special topography of their feet: nano-size hairs gives their feet an adhesive property. QuikClot (Photograph courtesy of Z-Medica Corporation) The family of QuikClot products make use of kaolin clay, a natural blood-clotter. Ultrasound Device (Photograph courtesy of George K. Scaffold Bandage Electric Bandage. Can humans regrow fingers?" When a hobby-store owner in Cincinnati sliced off his fingertip in 2005 while showing a customer why the motor on his model plane was dangerous, he went to the emergency room without the missing tip. He couldn't find it anywhere. The doctor bandaged the wound and recommended a skin graft to cover the top of his right-middle stub for cosmetic purposes, since nothing could be done to rebuild the finger.
Months later, he had regrown it, tissue, nerves, skin, fingernail and all. This particular hobbyist happened to have a brother in the tissue-regeneration business, who told him to forego the skin graft and instead apply a powdered extract taken from pig's bladder to the raw finger tip. Extracellular matrix is a component of body tissue that functions outside of the body's cells (thus the "extracellular" designation). In human fetuses, the substance works in concert with stem cells to grow and regrow everything from heart aortas to toes. Organ Regrowth: Get a New Pair of Eyes - PCWorld. First scientists said, "I wonder if we can print body parts. " Then they said, "I wonder if we can grow new blood vessels. " Well, that time where scientists say "I wonder if we can do this" has come again: Scientists have, for the first time ever, grown a rudimentary eye in a petri dish.
A Japanese team of biomechanical and biochemistry scientists have taken the first step toward building a complete eye, and this same process may some day be used to build a stockpile of "grow sheets" of cells that could be used in transplants. Instead of going blind, getting expensive surgery that may need to be repeated down the road, or getting these expensive adjustable glasses, you'll someday be able to go to the optometrist and get your old eyes swapped for a new pair!
Using a culture of embryonic stem cell aggregates, an embryonic-stem-cell-derived retinal epithelium (a layer of tissue) spontaneously formed into a embryonic optic cup (yep, it's complicated).