Implants made of your blood could repair broken bone

The body has a remarkable ability to heal itself when injured, but of course it has its limits. Now scientists at the University of Nottingham have developed a way to improve on the natural process, making implants created from a patient’s own blood to regenerate injuries, even repairing bone.

Bodily tissues can heal small cuts or fractures pretty efficiently. It starts with blood forming a solid structure called a regenerative hematoma (RH), a complex microenvironment that summons key cells, molecules and proteins that regenerate the tissue.

For the new study, the Nottingham researchers created an enhanced version of an RH. Rather than making a completely synthetic one from scratch, they used real blood and boosted its healing properties with peptide amphiphiles (PAs) – synthetic proteins that have different regions that are attracted to water and fats. Essentially, the PAs can build better structures for the hematoma, allowing the healing factors and cells that blood summons to work more effectively.

The team demonstrated that the new materials could perform the usual RH functions, such as recruiting healing cells and generating growth factors, while also being easy to assemble and manipulate. These structures can even be 3D printed into whatever shape is needed for any given patient, using samples of their own blood.

Image source: University of Nottingham.