Researchers create hydrogel that can repair damaged bones

In many ways, our bodies have a tremendous capability to heal themselves, but occasionally they do need help. Of course the catch with giving our bodies help is making sure it does not fail or ultimately hurt the body. Researchers at Rice University have recently developed a hydrogel that solves the problem of others, when it comes to guiding our bodies to repair damage to bones. One of the ways a doctor can help our bodies heal is to provide a scaffold for our cells to grow on. 

Unless one has infused one’s entire skeletal structure with the mythical adamantium from the Marvel Universe, every single one of us do happen to have bones that will snap and break if enough force is applied to it. When that happens, repairing such seriously damaged bones can prove to be quite a challenge, and if you would want to regrow those same bones faster than usual, it would require careful management on the part of the medical team as well as patient so that the right shape if produced. Researchers over at Rice University do seem to have come up with a gel that makes it a whole lot easier to produce only the bone tissue that a patient requires. This particular material is known as a hydrogel, where it is capable of kickstarting bone regeneration using a patient’s stem cells.