Image Credit: YouTube / MedXclusive Learning / Ohio State University
Known as Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT), the technology can begin repairing injuries in less than a second.
It might sound like something out of an episode of Star Trek, but according to scientists at The Ohio State University, this remarkable new technology can begin healing even the most serious of injuries almost immediately and has the potential to save many lives.
Taking the form of a silicone chip that simply needs to be placed on the patient's skin, the healing system "injects genetic code into skin cells, turning those skin cells into other types of cells."
What this means is that if someone has injured their leg for example, the chip could turn some of the patient's skin cells in to vascular cells to help repair the damage.
In one recent laboratory experiment, the team was able to restore brain functionality in a mouse that had suffered a stroke by using the technology to turn some of its skin cells in to brain cells.
With no known side effects and with the capacity to be deployed pretty much anywhere without training, these silicone patches could revolutionize the treatment of injuries and diseases.
The team is currently awaiting FDA approval to begin human trials later on this year.
I was just reading the other day how infants heal fast and scarlessly due to this process naturally occurring up to (if i member right) 6 months of age? Awesome sauce.
Awesome technology. But couldn't they come up with something to call it other than TNT? We don't need some idiot being asked, "Go get me the TNT" and the yahoo brings a lit stick of dynamite instead of the instrument.
I have terrible arthritis in my lower back and if this thing replaces damaged tissue with healthy then maybe....... Not getting any hopes up but we are both old enough, I am guessing, to remember when the Salk vaccine was a new thing that erased the horror of polio within our first decade of childhood.
Lol i think its actually in the dna and programmed to shut off similar to a gene that determines height. However, there are advocates of the consumption of the blood of the young to maintain youth, and some science to back it up... What are donation clinics really doing with all tha plasma??
Theoretically it seems possible but I don't know if I can believe it. I mean, I know integrated plasmids exist in biology but this chip would have to be made up of these types of plasmids along with some other chemical or nano structure that when electrically charged, allows those plasmids to infiltrate the surrounding contacted cells which in turn integrate the plasmids into their own DNA structure causing the cells to replicate into the desired target cell type. But the complexity of this seems mind-boggling. I'd have to see it to believe it.
If it works, this new TNT technology has the potential to be explosive! My two quite pessimistic cents: 1) What if once the chip is applied, it doesn't stay confined to the patch, but starts a chain reaction that reprograms the whole skin area (such as the whole arm)? 2) I guess I don't get it or the article doesn't specify it, but we don't have free kilograms of skin ready to be ripped off. Apparently the chip reprograms the cells, but doesn't increase or boost the cells number. That's fine if you just need some minor blood vessels, but if a person needs a new organ for example, where... [More]
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