Scientists Grow Bones In Lab, Sexy Puns Next On List

Holy Sh-t Cat can’t believe it.

Let the wordplay begin! Forget everything your milk-Nazi of a mother ever told you about drinking 2% to strengthen bones, Dr. Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic (gazunteight!), a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University, along with her research team, have successfully engineered human bones in the anatomical shape of their originals. What does this mean for you? Ha, nothing – you’ll still die alone and single, but that skeleton of yours is going to look great!

Dr. Vunjak-Novakovic, Dr. Warren L. Grayson and other members of the team used digital images of the joint to guide a machine that carved a three-dimensional replica, called a scaffold, from cleansed bone material. The team turned the bare scaffold into living tissue by putting it into a chamber molded to its exact shape, and adding human cells, typically isolated from bone marrow or liposuctioned fat. A steady source of oxygen, growth hormones, sugar and other nutrients was piped into the chamber, or bioreactor, so the bone would flourish. [source]

Damn, the last part of that quote kind of made me hungry. I read “growth hormones, sugar…” and suddenly I was on a deserted island eating with Guy Fieri. As of right now, the engineered bones are being tested on animals and a few people (pfff, poor bast–ds), with researchers speculating that the manufactured pieces could make their way into operating rooms within the next decade.

Look, I’m all for the advancement of science, but this bone engineering stuff is old news. Why, it feels like just yesterday that Dr.Reid Tamaranda revealed his groundbreaking research:

[source]