Scientists have found that sea urchin spines have a special component that could help promote bone healing from fractures, disease and trauma. The structure of the material they have found could push the limits of current bone repair treatments.

There have been many methods to facilitate bone healing from using donated tissue for severe issues and using casts for minor cases. However, current methods used to treat severe bone fractures and damage have found to have limits to how it can be applied and so scientists looked at sea urchin spines.

Scientists Xing Zhang, Yue Zhu, Zheng Guo along with their colleagues have found a way to manipulate sea urchin spines to make grafting material for bone fractures. Science Daily reports that sea urchin spines have the potential to replace current bone scaffolding materials due to their durability.

In their research and testing, they found that sea urchin spines can be formed according to what is needed like the size to build a scaffold for bone fractures. They converted the material in a way that still retains its porous but strong form.

The bone grafts made from sea urchin spines were tested on lab animals. The scientists found that the porous material can help facilitate more healing as the nutrients can pass through it unlike current bioceramics used by surgeons today.

This comes as a welcome advancement as current methods used to replace bone fractures and defects like hydroxyapatite used in bone scaffolds repair can be brittle. The weak material could break off and cause more harm in the healing bone fractures as the broken pieces could dig in neighboring tissues.

The scientists detailed their findings online in the journal for American Chemical Society. The researchers hope that their new finds in sea urchin spines could revolutionize bone fracture repairs in the future.

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