|
|
|
|
Pig Intestine Has Amazing Medical Properties Recent research shows that tissue taken from the small intestine of pigs has remarkable healing and restorative effects in a wide variety of medical applications. How it works is still not understood. By GSReport Start Date: 2/25/00 A Jan 31, 2000 press release from Purdue University in Indiana declares that material derived from the small intestine of a pig is revolutionizing many medical procedures. The material, called small-intestine submucosa or SIS, is already being used to cure chronic sores and repair internal organs and hernias. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared five applications of its use so far, the most recent in January 2000 for "full thickness" wounds so severe that they sometimes result in amputation. For reasons not yet fully understood, SIS prompts the human body to replace damaged tissues with little or no scarring, recreating the healing efficiency of young children. Veterinarians as well have been surprised to see that dogs treated with SIS recovered from usually devastating injuries in which the skin on their legs was torn off in accidents, a phenomenon known as "degloving," which previously would have resulted in amputation. Not only did all of the skin grow back, but the hair grew back as well. "This is not just something that looks promising. This is now proven to work," says Stephen F. Badylak, a senior research scientist at Purdue's Department of Biomedical Engineering, where scientists in the 1980s discovered SIS's healing qualities while looking for ways to make substitute blood vessels. The material has since been developed for patient care by start-up company Cook Biotech Inc., located at the Purdue Research Park in West Lafayette, Indiana. Researchers know that SIS essentially functions as a natural framework for repairing and growing tissue and that it contains numerous proteins and "growth factors" that signal the healing process. "It is basically Mother Nature's scaffold for wound healing," says Badylak. When SIS is applied to skin wounds or sutured internally, the material prompts the body to build new tissue, inexplicably replacing the intestine-derived material with new human or animal tissue. Moreover, the replacement tissue matches the tissue that existed originally in that part of the body. "The body sees the implanted material and says, 'That needs to be repaired,' so it dismantles the material as it grows new cells of its own type," says Neal Fearnot, president of Cook Biotech and a Purdue adjunct professor of biomedical engineering. "We know of no cases of rejection in either humans or animals." Once SIS is placed within a body, it aids in the proliferation of new blood vessels, which is important for the wound-healing process. The material also strengthens in response to stress, much like natural tissue. "It's going to be a very good thing for mankind," says Matthew Parmenter, an Indiana physician who was one of the first to use SIS for wounds and open sores and who now has treated about 150 patients successfully. Pig tissues have had a long history of medical use in humans. "There are many anatomical similarities between pigs and humans, especially in the cardiovascular system," says Cook Biotech vice president Mark Bleyer. However, scientists do not yet know exactly which of SIS's numerous components are essential for it to function, a subject for future research. If researchers knew more about SIS, they might be able to further tailor the material for specific organs and for certain uses for which there are presently no effective treatments.
Built by Frontier on a Macintosh on 6/17/00; 12:11:11 PM. Web Comments  -
Produced by Larry LoweServed 4563 times since 2/25/00. |
|
