Something I find interesting Molly Stevens is head of a bio-materials lab where they study and make new materials to be used in the body for remodeling. Molly herself finds beauty in the way things work and adept with the body. She loves how architecturally sound everything is and wants to put her life work towards it. In history it has been see as to how useful things can be, most of the time you would see physicians that just took something off the shelf and that is quite amazing.
Mostly when looking to help remodel or reshape the body after a traumatic instant we look towards other parts of the body. And yes, that can be useful but yet we have somehow strayed away from the concept of using bio-compatible materials to solve our injuries. Traditionally what is common in growing knew necessary parts of the body is Tissue Engineering. Where you extract the cells and grow them artificially to be put back into the body. These cells are called a Stem Cells. Stem Cells are basically like a blank slate. They can become any kind of tissue. So now when you take a look at the body you can see just how many tissues can be utilized just by this one cell. To get the cell where you want it you are going need to secure it in the right environment. Many factors can come into effect when thinking about what patient you are planned on giving the final product to. Some examples are like prior diseases, any health concerns the patient is currently having, they're biochemistry and the mechanics of how everything works. Tissues regenerate in different variations of each other. However Bone is very different than the other tissues. Bone has to be good at repairing because of just day to day use. On of the ways to repair a fraction is a common procedure called an illiac crest harvest. This is where a doctor will just take a bit of bone from your hip area and transplant it to the place needed. And it actually works really well because it's your own bone, it has been in your body before. However the downside to the procedure is that this may cause significant pain to the defect sight. So what scientist have thought is maybe there is a way where we could grow the bone our selves like any other tissue and implant it there. The way we could do it is by going back and look at the tissue engineering approach. except now they have gotten rid of the need to harvest and culture the stem cells from the patient. So in turn it has a new name to go with the new technology, the In Vivo Bioreactor. This process makes it so the doctor can go into the operation and once the Neo-Bone, new bone, has grown back it would seem like you had never been operated on.
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MY American Dream.For me my "American Dream" is to be an Orthopedic Surgeon. The catch is that I'm a woman, and I am Bipolar. Both of these things, others in my field could see as a set back, and they would be right to think that. They are obstacles in my life. However, they are my obstacles to worry about. Not anybody else's.
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