Pig Pixie Dust: New Hope for Regrowing Amputated Limbs

It's amazing what scientists discover ... and in this case, what can be made from a pig's bladder!

From the UK's Mail Online:

The amazing 'pixie dust' made from pigs bladder that regrew a severed finger in FOUR weeks

Sponges can do it and so can starfish. For flatworms it is no problem, and both lizards and salamanders can pull off the same trick.

The trick in question is regeneration, the almost magical property possessed by some animals to regrow whole limbs, tails, other body parts or organs if they are lost in an accident.

This spontaneous regeneration has only recently begun to be understood and it involves an incredibly complex interplay of genes and tissues.

What is known is that regeneration does not - except to a very limited degree - occur in humans or, indeed, in any mammals. Cut off a man's leg or a rabbit's foot and the best you can hope for is a scar covered stump.

Cut off a finger-tip and, unless you find a surgeon to sew it back on again promptly, you will simply have to put up with one digit shorter than the rest.

That is, if reports are to be believed, unless you are Lee Spievack, a model aircraft enthusiast from Cincinnati in the U.S. who, in 2005, accidentally sliced an inch off the tip of his index finger with a model aeroplane propeller.

He was offered a tissue graft but refused when his brother Alan, a physician who has been researching tissue regeneration, persuaded him to sprinkle what is being termed "pixie dust" on the stump.

The dust, actually a collagen powder derived from pigs' bladders, appeared to provide a suitable "matrix" or framework, stimulating regrowth of the tissues and division of the cells, to enable Mr Spievack's finger to grow back - in just a month.

And not just a stump - flesh, tendon, skin, fingernail, fingerprints and all.

It is an extraordinary story because, if it can be confirmed, it will point the way to a breakthrough in one of medical science's greatest problems: the inability of humans to regenerate lost tissue.

One organisation with a keen interest in tissue regeneration is the U.S. Army. Military researchers are reported to be working with University of Pittsburgh scientists who developed the pixie dust to find a way to allow injured soldiers to regrow lost fingers, skin, and even whole limbs.

With hundreds of U.S. soldiers coming home injured from Iraq every month, such an advance would be leapt upon by the Pentagon.

Dr Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh is the scientist who developed the pixie dust. It consists of a mixture of protein and connective tissue which is already used by surgeons to repair tendons.

The U.S. Army has invested millions of dollars in regenerative medicine, and Dr Badylak - and Mr Spievack's brother - could become very rich men.

The powder, he has said, "tells the body to start the process of tissue regrowth".

But can it really be the case that a small and hitherto unknown team of medics has made a breakthrough that has had the world's mainstream researchers baffled for decades?

Or has something less dramatic happened? Could Mr Spievack's fingertip simply have been damaged badly, but not beyond repair?

"It does all sound terribly anecdotal," says Dr Stephen Minger, an expert in tissue regeneration and stem cells at King's College in London. "We simply do not have enough information to know exactly what they have done."

According to Dr Minger, while it could be theoretically possible that a man has regrown his finger by sprinkling it with powdered pig bladder, it seems unlikely.

The problem is that a fingertip, while appearing simple, is actually a very complex structure. It consists of skin, fat, connective tissue, bone, tendon, nerves and blood vessels as well as the quite complex apparatus which grows the fingernail.

Continue here for the rest of the story.