'Pixie dust' brings scientists closer to growing limbs By Medical reporter Sophie Scott
American researchers claim they have developed a medical powder that allows severed fingers to grow and reform.
They are confident it has the potential to treat a range of conditions including cancer.
Sixty-nine-year-old Lee Spievak, who works in a hobby shop in Ohio, severed his finger in an accident with a toy plane.
Mr Spievak says his fingertip grew back in only four weeks after using the medical powder he calls pixie dust.
He says the powder came from Dr Stephen Badylak, a leading US expert in regenerative medicine.
He is experimenting with cells extracted from pig intestines, dried up and then turned into a powder.
Dr Badylak says putting the powder onto a wound encourages cells to regenerate, which means doctors are one step closer to creating new limbs and organs.
"I do think we will have strategies that will allow us to reconstruct the bones and to promote the growth of functional tissue around those bones, and that is a major step towards eventually doing the entire limb," he said.
According to Australian doctors, the reason the treatment worked was because the patient's finger bone and nail remained intact.
"The finger pulp, in fact no bone no muscle or no nail part has been regrown and that is possible," Sydney's Concord Hospital's Dr Peter Maitz said.
Doctors can grow new skin cells but they cannot get the blood vessels in those cells to stay alive.
That is where this new substance might prove invaluable.
