A sponge soaked in a specially engineered DNA -- coding for a natural growth factor called bone morphogenetic protein -- could help deal with severe bone fractures that do not heal completely. Large fractures tend to fill with weak scar tissue rather than new bone. Jeffrey Bonadio and his colleagues from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, US, have just reported that the addition of genes to bone morphogenetic factors could heal such fractures within a short period of time. The regenerated bone is said to be as strong as the original.
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