Researchers have engineered living bone tissue to repair bone loss in the jaw, a structure that is typically difficult to restore. The team led by researchers from Columbia University, New York, grafted customized implants into pig jaws that resulted in integration and function of the engineered graft into the recipient’s own tissue.
The work, supported in part by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), and reported in the June 15, 2016 issue of Science Translational Medicine, suggests that personalized bone grafts for facial reconstruction may be possible in the future.
