Human Muscle, Regrown on Animal Scaffolding

Human Muscle, Regrown on Animal Scaffolding

Christian Welch

12/20/12

Core Biology 1 Honors/ C-Block, Ms. Davies

Current Event Report: Human Muscle, Regrown on Animal Scaffolding

Henry Fountain “Human Muscle, Regrown on Animal Scaffolding” The New York Times. The New York times, September 16, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/health/research/human-muscle-regenerated-with-animal-help.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=research

            The Article “Human Muscle, Regrown on Animal Scaffolding” by Henry Fountain is about the amazing new medical technology that can re-grow certain limb muscles.  Dr. Peter Rubin the leader of this discovery explains how this incredible process works. The doctors take out animal scaffolding, and isolate it by scrapping out all of the cells and tissues leaving an intricate web of proteins.  Once this is completed the doctors implanted the scaffolding (or “matrix” as the article calls it), into the body. The body will then break down the new proteins and the nerves send the brain signals to rebuild the site by sending stem cells. Then the cells will turn into muscle cells and slowly reconstruct the area until the muscle is complete. This process isn’t perfect though. It is difficult time consuming and it can only reconstructed one muscle but in reality when someone is hurt as badly as war victims, they new several muscles to be re-grown. This Article focuses on the treatment of one patient who got his left thigh blew off from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. This private named Stg. Ron Strang, lost all his thigh muscles, and even after intensive care and physical therapy he could barley walk. DR. Rubin used Strang as a can in his scaffolding studies and the results were astonishing. The war hero had begun to grow new muscles from the massive divot in his thigh. Now two years later the sergeant can walk easily, run on the treadmill and is thinking about join the police force. Now he says, “If you know me, or know to look for it, you can see a slight limp,” he said. “But everybody else, they go, ‘I would never have guessed.’ ” The difficult part of the procedure is you have to scrape out all of the dead scar tissue in the patients wound or else the scaffolding can work. It needs to be in contact will healthy, living blood cells and tissue to correctly do its job

            This will help society with problems all over the world and let them regain abilities that they didn’t have before. Using this technology doctors can learn more about the human anatomy and try to unlock its mysteries. Now with this information at hand doctors can begin to treat war victims and prevent amputation. This treatment will soon be works on by many people until scientist have mastered the process and can treat and re-build much more than just one muscle. There are millions of untreated patients in the world who could use this medicine to stay alive and with this new information it can change the way doctors help people daily. More people can be saved and live more at ease instead of carrying the burden of pain and suffering from a wound.

            I like reading this article because this was an extremely interesting topic and the author explained the scenarios well. He told all of the medical procedures without losing my attention and in an easy to read way. There was never a time when I got bored while reading this article because of the easy tone of the article and the subject being explained. I have no critiques for this article; the only thing I have to say is that you should read the story yourself. Henry Fountain did a good job at including all the important details about the procedure and how it works. He also included several good quotes that helped portray the scene and how intense the conditions were for these victims. Overall I thought it was a very good article and it told an incredible story about medicine, hope and new discoveries.