One Man's Disease is Another Man's Cure

In my life I have broken quite a few bones and torn out nearly every ligament in my right elbow. Needless to say I have spent considerable time in casts and braces, and it is not a fun time with the itching and the constricted movements and just generally not being able to do any thing fun. A team at Harvard Med School feels my pain and have developed a way to amp up the bone and connective tissue healing process.

Lets start with a little background as to how bones heal. Bones heal in a process called endochondral ossification where the chondrocytes in your hyaline cartilage (a cartilage found by your bones) rapidly divide, grow, calcify and die forming new bone. This process also occurs in the muscles of people with a disease called fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva causing bones to grow in and from muscle tissue.

The researchers at Harvard have found the gene that causes this disease and are using it to increase healing rates of bone by harvesting muscle and fat cells from the patient, infecting them with this disease and then introducing them to the fracture site. The cells congregate at the fracture site and form into bone knocking off a little less then a month of cast time. Meaning you can get back to doing whatever it was that broke your bone the first time!