Bioengineers have made great strides harnessing the body’s ability to start over, whether regenerating heart tissue and bones, or using stem cells to regrow fingertips. Still, much of regenerative medicine’s promise remains inside the laboratory—or at least that was what I thought when I began reporting for The Body Builders: Inside the Science of the Engineered Human.
Some clinicians, like Dr. Eugenio Rodriguez, aren’t waiting for trials to be completed to help patients. Instead, they are already adding regenerative technologies to their medical toolboxes, and using them to save human limbs. Years ago down in Delray Beach, Florida, Rodriguez, a trauma surgeon, caused a bit of a sensation after exploring the regenerative powers of pig guts.
Rodriguez first made headlines in 2013 when a horse bit off the index finger of Paul Halpern, a 33-year-old horse trainer. Halpern’s insurance company pushed him to amputate the rest of his finger, but Rodriguez built a rough mold, or extracellular matrix (ECM), of Halpern’s missing fingertip using a commercially available medical patch made of pig bladder. Rodriguez attached the mold to the stump of the remaining finger and the bone and even the missing fingernail grew back.
The act of healing was spotlighted in the local news, but when I saw the story I was not wholly surprised. In 2011, I had written an article for Discoverabout this technique, which was developed by Stephen Badylak, a bioengineer at the University of Pittsburgh’s McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine. Back in the late 1980s, Badylak discovered—quite by accident—that pig guts possess remarkable regenerative properties. In recent years, he has conducted a number of trials aimed at seeing just how far he can push them, while at the same time decoding the strange biochemical alchemy that makes healing with pig guts possible.
