Last year, a story captured the hearts and imaginations of Harry Potter fans everywhere: Lee Spievack sliced off his fingertip (while showing a customer why the motor on his model plane was dangerous), and regrew it with magic pixie dust made from dried pigs' bladder.
The real story, of course, did not involve magic. The powder, developed by his brother's company, was composed of pig extracellular matrix—proteins that provide the scaffolding for cells and play a major role in wound healing—and was already in use for treating ulcers in people and to help horses repair torn ligaments. Nevertheless, the story got a fair bit of press at the time—which has, for some reason, beenrecentlyrevived, with the inventor of the pixie dust voicing his hopes that the powder could one day be used to regrow bones and entire limbs.
But these newly emboldened dreams of limb regeneration using pig bladders are ...
