Its a groundbreaking discovery, of a malleable membrane which stimulates on a cellular level the "neo-bone formation" in just a few weeks. It has already been tested in smaller animals and is ready to enter the first clinical trials, which if successful, could prove to be one of the most important inventions in the field of medicine in recent years.
Bone regeneration is essential in medicine when accidents or a significant amount of bone is lost as a result of surgical treatment, tumors, cysts or other abnormalities.
Liliana Missana and Maria Victoria Jammal from the National University of Tucuman, Argentina have managed to create the bone-regeneration membrane. They managed to create the malleable membrane from the combination of a recombinant human protein called "paratohormona", and a protein called "collagen". Both of these proteins make up the malleable membrane which is able to regenerate bone tissue in the required amount and form and only taking a couple of weeks to do so.
The team also includes with Jorge Juarez, dentists Nina Pastorino and Viviana Schemberger and María Lilia Romano. This finding will be a much cheaper alternative for people who have lost more than 8 mm of bone, as smaller amounts can be regenerated naturally by the body.
According to Argentinian newspapers, test results in mice have proven to be very successful, regenerating 57 percent of missing bone in a period of just six weeks. One of the biggest advantages of this new material is the fact that it is highly malleable, adaptable to nearly any type of bone, very easy to handle and extremely eco-friendly as it does not generate any negative effects to the environment.