Within the wide range of cells that make up a human, there are those that, during the embryonic stage, have the ability to transform into any type of cell (be it a myocyte, hepatocyte, erythrocyte, neuron... etc).
This ability is restricted to a particular type of cell, called "stem cells" (misnamed "stem cells"). In the animal kingdom, these cells have the ability to regenerate certain limbs in some animals; but in medicine, they have long been used to repair certain parts of the human body that have suffered injuries.
However, given their extreme delicacy, handling them correctly is not an easy task. Now scientists have found a very simple way to convert stem cells into bone cells, using only high-frequency sound waves to transform them with 10 minutes of treatment per day for 5 days."The sound waves reduced the treatment time that is usually required for stem cells to start turning into bone cells by several days," explains Dr. Amy Gelmi, research vice-chancellor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia. "This method also does not require any special 'bone-inducing' drugs and is very easy to apply to stem cells."
In their research, the team used a microchip to transform stem cells put into silicone oil and placed in a culture dish, which were subjected to frequencies of 10MHz.
The project is the result of years of study in other similar projects, only here, more promising results have been seen, and the researchers think that their method will not only serve to induce transformation to bone cells, but to any other type of cell. . "Our device is inexpensive and easy to use, so it could easily be scaled up to treat large numbers of cells simultaneously, which is vital for effective tissue engineering," says Chemical Engineer Leslie Yeo.
The research team hopes that their method can later be used to regenerate bone in patients who are suffering from bone cancer, and later, in the treatment of other types of diseases.
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