Pig dust

[Astraea]

Stephen Badylak, a senior research scientist at Purdue University, holds a piece of material harvested from a pig's bladder.

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With the help of an experimental powder, a man’s severed finger has regrown to its original length in just four weeks, reports London’s Daily Mail.
Lee Spievack, of Cincinnati, who sliced almost half an inch off the top of one of his fingers, described the powder as “pixie dust,” according to the newspaper.
The “pixie dust” is actually extra-cellular matrix, bursting with collagen and is made from a dried pig’s bladder, the newspaper reports.
The dust was designed to regenerate damaged ligaments in horses, the Daily Mail said.
Collagen is known to give skin strength and elasticity. It is thought that the dust kick-starts the body's natural healing process by sending out signals that mobilize the body's own cells into repairing the damaged tissue, according to the newspaper.
Spievack said his finger even has a fingernail and fingerprint.
Spievack injured his finger three years ago when it got caught in the propeller of a model plane. He did not want a skin graft, opting instead to try the “pixie dust.”
“There are all sorts of signals in the body,” said Dr. Stephen Badylak of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. “We have signals that are good for forming scar tissue and others that are good for regenerating tissues.
"One way to think about these matrices is that we've taken out many of the stimuli for scar tissue formation and left those signals which were always there for constructive remodeling."
Essentially, the powder directs tissues to grow fresh instead of forming a scar.
Spievak has not lost any bone, nerves or tendon material.

[MIR]

here is what the BBC has to say about this.

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

[LiquidManZero]

Nice to see all this science fiction kind of stuff starting to exist.

[ugetab]

I don't know the limits of the human body's ability to regenerate, but I suspect that one who loses a good deal of skin could benefit highly from this in the near future. It also brings to mind imbedding organs with this material so that the body could regenerate a kidney or a heart, or end the need for insulin shots, or potentially, end up regrowing such organs from the inside out.

The primary issue I see is that the regrown portion wouldn't last as long as the rest of the body. I'm sure that age would find equalibrium, such that old people won't need it a long time, and young people will be able to compensate for it bodily.