Man's finger 'regrown using pig extract'

A man who lost his finger tip in a model plane accident has apparently had it regrown using powdered pig bladder extract.

Lee Spievack, 69, from Cincinnati, Ohio, severed his right middle finger to the bone in an accident with the propeller of a model plane in August 2005. The missing piece, about one centimetre long, was never found.

His brother Dr Alan Spievak, a former Harvard surgeon who owns a company called ACell that makes an extract of pig bladder for promoting healing and tissue regeneration, advised him to try the powder.

After four week of using it the digit had grown to its original length, he claims, and in four months "it looked like my normal finger".

Mr Spievack said it is a little hard, as if calloused, and there is a slight scar on the end. The nail continues to grow at twice the speed of his other nails.

"All my fingers in this cold weather have cracked except that one," he said.

The powder was mostly collagen and a variety of substances, without any pig cells, said Dr Stephen Badylak, a regeneration expert at the University of Pittsburgh and scientific adviser to ACell.

It forms microscopic scaffolding for incoming human cells to occupy and it emits chemical signals to encourage those cells to regenerate tissue, he said.

Those signals do not specifically say "make a finger", but cells pick up that message from their surroundings, he said.

"We're not smart enough to figure out how to regrow a finger," Dr Badylak said.

"Maybe what we can do is bring all the pieces of the puzzle to the right place and then let mother nature take its course.

"But we are very uninformed about how all of this works. There's a lot more that we don't know than we do know."

Scientists are now planning to see whether the powdered pig extract can help injured soldiers regrow parts of their fingers.

A large US government-funded project is also trying to unlock the secrets of how some animals regrow limbs, with hopes of applying the lessons to humans.

The extract has also been used in the treatment of ulcers and other wounds and to help regrow cartilage.

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