Artificial bone

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Overview

Artificial bone refers to bone-like material created in a laboratory that can be used in bone grafts, to replace human bone that was lost due to severe fractures, disease, etc.

Bones are rigid organs that serve various functions in the human body (or generally in vertebrates), including mechanical support, protection of soft organs, blood production (from bone marrow), etc. Bone is a very complex tissue: strong, elastic, and self-repairing.

Damaged bone can be replaced with bone from other parts of the body (autografts), from cadavers (allograft), or with various ceramics or metallic alloys. The use of autografts limits how much bone is available, while the other options can result in rejection by the human body.

There has been much research towards creating artificial bone. Richard J. Lagow, at the University of Texas at Austin, developed a way of creating a strong bone-like porous structure from bone powder, which, when introduced in the body, can allow the growth of blood vessels, and which can be gradually replaced by natural bone. Research at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has resulted in a metal-ceramic composite that has, like bone, a fine microstructure, and which may help create artificial bone.

A team of British scientists have developed "injectable bone", a soft substance which hardens in the body. They won the Medical Futures Innovation Award for their discovery, and it is planned to test this material in clinical trials.