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Growing New Bone

by Daniel E. Prince, MD, MPH,
Orthopedic Surgery, Musculoskeletal Oncology
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Healthnetwork Foundation Service Excellence Award recipient, 2018

W hen I was a student at Yale new idea.”
“It is a great idea,” he said. “But it’s not a
University School of Medicine in
the early 2000s, one of my
He must have seen a disappointed look on
professors and mentors introduced my face because he said, “You didn’t think
me to the concept of bone regeneration. I you’d thought this up did you?”
hadn’t known it was possible for the body to “Well... yes,” I admitted.
heal and regenerate itself to such an extent, Turns out a professor in Japan had been
and I found it absolutely fascinating! exploring this same idea for 25 years or so
An idea struck. What if we could tap into the already. But still, my mentor assured me, it was
body’s ability to regenerate bone to help cancer a good idea and certainly there was room to
patients? It was a novel concept ... or so explore and expand on it.
I thought.
Fast-forward to 2014
A little backstory here
I was fortunate enough to be recruited to join
High-grade bone cancers used to be a death the team at the Memorial Sloan Kettering
sentence. If a person was lucky, they would get Cancer Center, and we began to explore the
a limb amputated and be able to live a few possibilities of bone regeneration. I’m excited
more years. But then chemotherapy came to tell you that the research and clinic trials
along and suddenly around 70 percent of we are doing are game changing for people,
younger patients with these aggressive bone especially younger people, with bone cancer.
cancers were surviving. Doctors could now Essentially we are helping the patient’s body
treat the cancer with chemo, remove the heal itself. We trick the body into thinking
tumors, and replace the bone defect with there’s a fracture and we can slowly but surely
metal implants. However, metal things tend to use the fracture healing response to make new
break and wear out. As people got older, they bone to seal the gap where the tumor was
needed multiple surgical interventions to fix removed. In this way we can avoid the need for
or replace the implants. That meant hospital metal implants and help people grow back
stays, risk of complications, sometimes their own bone. And—most importantly—we
infection.
can set up a young person for a much better
quality of life for a longer period of time than
Now, back to my idea ever before. As of now, Memorial Sloan
Instead of medical implants, what if we could use Kettering is the only place in the U.S. using
the body’s natural ability to regenerate bone? this limb-lengthening technique, but I hope it
I couldn’t wait to tell my mentor. won’t be long before others follow suit.

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