Regrow a severed finger with pixie dust

"Hey Bruce,

"Ran across this on the BBC and saw no one on Wired has blogged or posted about it yet. Scoop your colleagues?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7354458.stm

Drew Brayshaw, M.Sc., P.Geo

Geoscientist/Hydrologist

(((Thanks for sending in that hideous severed fingertip, Drew! But I can't scoop my WIRED blogger colleagues as it takes me all day just to read 'em. And when I *do* read 'em, and they *have* scooped me, as they incessantly do – I just blog 'em.)))

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7354458.stm

Link: BBC NEWS | Health | The man who grew a finger.

(...)

"The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he'd lost it for good.

"Today though, you wouldn't know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it's all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.

'Pixie dust'

How? Well that's the truly remarkable part. It wasn't a transplant. Mr Spievak re-grew his finger tip. He used a powder - or pixie dust as he sometimes refers to it while telling his story.

Mr Speivak's brother Alan - who was working in the field of regenerative medicine - sent him the powder.

For ten days Mr Spievak put a little on his finger.

"The second time I put it on I already could see growth. Each day it was up further. Finally it closed up and was a finger.

"It took about four weeks before it was sealed."

Now he says he has "complete feeling, complete movement."

The "pixie dust" comes from the University of Pittsburgh, though in the lab Dr Stephen Badylak prefers to call it extra cellular matrix....