Let's take the case of a person who loses the tip of a finger. It employs an entirely different process than the typical mammalian healing mechanism. In people, it's used to treat ulcers, closing a hole in the tissue that lines the stomach. Pig-extracted extracellular matrix is already used by veterinarians to help horses repair torn ligaments. Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh, children up to the age of two have been known to regrow fingertips with no outside help. After all, according to regeneration researcher Dr. But with evidence that applying extracellular matrix from a pig can initiate certain types of regeneration in humans, they're wondering if they can trigger human extracellular matrix to start working again. Scientists have long believed that when a fetus reaches full development, this extracellular matrix stops functioning. Fetuses can regrow almost anything that gets damaged while in the womb. In human fetuses, the substance works in concert with stem cells to grow and regrow everything from heart aortas to toes.
So extracellular matrix extracted from the bladder of a pig does not actually have any of the pig's cells in it. It's made up mostly of collagen, a type of protein. It holds the signals that direct cells to divide, differentiate and build themselves into a specific form.Įxtracellular matrix is a component of body tissue that functions outside of the body's cells (thus the "extracellular" designation). It's like a cellular scaffolding, and all animals have it. The extract, called extracellular matrix, lays the framework that cells use to generate any given body part.
Extracellular matrix skin#
This particular hobbyist happened to have a brother in the tissue-regeneration business, who told him to forego the skin graft and instead apply a powdered extract taken from pig's bladder to the raw finger tip.