For those of us who live in earthquake country the recent devastating quakes in Nepal are a reminder, as if we needed one, of the danger and damage these temblors can cause. Many of those injured in the quake suffered severe bone injuries – broken legs, crushed limbs etc. Repairing those injuries is going to take time and expert medical care. But now a new discovery is opening up the possibility of repairing injuries like this, even regenerating the broken bones, in a more efficient and effective way.

A study published in Scientific Reports  shows that it is possible to regrow bone tissue using protein signals from stem cells. Even more importantly is that this new bone tissue seems to be just as effective, in terms of the quantity and quality of the bone created, as the current methods.

In a news release senior author Todd McDevitt, Ph.D., said this shows we might not even need whole stem cells to regenerate damaged tissue:

“This proof-of-principle work establishes a novel bone formation therapy that exploits the regenerative potential of stem cells. With this technique we can produce new tissue that is completely stem cell-derived and that performs similarly with the gold standard in the field.”

McDevitt – who is now at the Gladstone Institutes thanks to a research leadership award from CIRM  – extracted the proteins that stem cells produce to help regenerate damaged tissues. They then isolated the particular factors they needed to help regenerate bones, in this case bone morphogenetic protein or BMP. That BMP was then transplanted into mice to stimulate bone growth. And it worked.

While this compares favorably to current methods of regenerating or repairing damaged bones it has a few advantages. Current methods rely on getting bones from cadavers and grinding them up to get the growth factors needed to stimulate bone growth. But bones from cadavers can often be in short supply and the quality is highly variable.

As McDevitt says:

“These limitations motivate the need for more consistent and reproducible source material for tissue regeneration. As a renewable resource that is both scalable and consistent in manufacturing, pluripotent stem cells are an ideal solution.”

He says the next step is to build on this research, and try to find ways to make this method even more efficient. If he succeeds he says it could open up new ways of treating devastating injuries such as those sustained by soldiers in battle, or by earthquake victims.