"Holy Grail" Of Healing Regenerative Powder Helped Re-Grow A Man's Fingertip, And Could Change Medicine

(CBS) A new generation of researchers is changing the way we heal, one cell at a time. This is the second in a CBS News series on the innovative field of regenerative medicine.
You might become a believer in the power of magic dust, when you see how a special powder re-grew the tip of Lee Spievack's finger.

He sliced off a half inch of his finger in the propeller of a hobby shop airplane. His finger never even formed a scar.

"Your finger grew back flesh, blood, vessels and nail?" CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

"Four weeks," Spievak said.

Is this essentially what re-grew Spievak's finger.

This powder is a medical product called extracellular matrix. Made from pig bladders, it is a mix of protein and connective tissue surgeons often use to repair tendons.

But it's the matrix's unusual power to regenerate tissue that's helping launch a new field: regenerative medicine.

"It tells the body, start that process of tissue re-growth," said Dr. Stephen Badylak of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Regenerative Medicine.

Badylak believes the matrix somehow mobilizes cells, some of them adult stem cells whose job it is to maintain and repair injured tissue.

"It will change the body from thinking that its responding to inflammation and injury to thinking that it needs to re-grow normal tissue," Badylak said.

If this helped Mr Spievak's finger re-grow, could you grow a whole limb?

"In theory," Badylak said.

That theory, that it might be possible to re-grow a limb, is about to be tested by the United States Military. The Army, working in conjuction with the University of Pittsburgh, is about to use that matrix on the amputated fingers of soldiers home from the war.

Dr. Steven Wolf, at the Army Institute of Surgical Research, says the military has invested millions of dollars in Regenerative research, hoping to re-grow limbs, lost muscle, even burned skin.

"And it's hard to ignore this guys missing half his skin, this guy's missing his leg," Wolf said. "Is there any way we can make that grow back? Some of that technology exists and now its time to field it."

Several different technologies for harnessing regeneration are now in clinical trials around the world. One machine, being tested in Germany, sprays a burn patient's own cells onto a burn, signaling the skin to re-grow.

Badylak is about to implant matrix material - shaped like an esophagus - into patients with throat cancer.

---

Read more about organ regeneration in Part I of the series

---

"We fully expect that this material will cause the body to re-form normal esophageal tissue," Badylak said.

Some of the most advanced tests involve the heart. This patch of material is being put on - like a band aid - to regenerate heart muscle damaged by a heart attack.

And patient Mary Beth Babo is getting her own adult stem cells injected into her heart, in hopes of growing new arteries. Her surgeon is Dr. Joon Lee.

"It's what we consider the Holy Grail of our field for coronary heart disease," Lee said.

The Holy Grail, because if stem cells can re-grow arteries, there's less need for surgery.

"If people don't have to go through that, this would be the way to go for sure," Babo said.

Lee Spievak jokes he's got a 69-year-old body and a two-year-old fingertip.

But his fingertip has researchers imagining a time when re-grown limbs replace prosthetics, when re-grown tissues replace surgery, when the body does its healing with its own cells from within.

� MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

"Holy Grail" Of Healing Regenerative Powder Helped Re-Grow A Man's Fingertip, And Could Change Medicine Forever

An Ohio man has regrown a finger thanks to a medical miracle that doctors hope will enable patients to regenerate burnt skin and damaged organs, revolutionizing the way the body heals itself.

When Lee Spievack, a hobby-store salesman in Cincinnati, slashed off the tip of his finger with a model-plane propeller, the missing piece vanished along with any reasonable hope of his hand being whole again.

In a cutting-edge medical technique that seems ripped from the pages of science fiction, a powdery substance helped the 69-year-old regrow a fully functional digit with tissue, nerves, skin, nail, and a fingerprint.

Spievack had been helping a customer one evening in August 2005 with an engine on a model airplane behind the shop. He knew the motor was risky because it required somebody to turn the prop backwards to make it run the right way.

"I pointed to it," Spievack recalled the other day, "and said, ‘You need to get rid of this engine, it's too dangerous.' And I put my finger through the prop."

He misjudged the distance to the spinning plastic blade. It sliced off his fingertip, leaving just a bit of the nail bed. The missing piece, three-eighths of an inch long, was never found.

An emergency room doctor wrapped up the rest of his finger and sent him to a hand surgeon, who recommended a skin graft to cover what was left of his finger. What was gone, it appeared, was gone forever.

If Spievack had been a toddler, things might have been different. Up to about age 2, people can consistently regrow fingertips, says Dr. Stephen Badylak, a regeneration expert at the University of Pittsburgh. But that's rare in adults, he said.

Spievack, however, did have a major advantage - a brother, Alan, a former Harvard surgeon who'd founded a company called ACell Inc., that makes an extract of pig bladder for promoting healing and tissue regeneration.

It helps horses regrow ligaments, for example, and the federal government has given clearance to market it for use in people. Similar formulations have been used in many people to do things like treat ulcers and other wounds and help make cartilage.

The summer before Lee Spievack's accident, Dr. Alan Spievack had used it on a neighbor who'd cut his fingertip off on a tablesaw. The man's fingertip grew back over four to six weeks, Alan Spievack said.

Lee Spievack took his brother's advice to forget about a skin graft and try the pig powder.

Soon a shipment of the stuff arrived and Lee Spievack started applying it every two days. Within four weeks his finger had regained its original length, he says, and in four months "it looked like my normal finger."

Spievack said it's a little hard, as if calloused, and there's 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.

All in all, he said, "I'm quite impressed."

Behrman/AP

Lee Spievack

Spievack/AP

Spievack accidentally sliced off the tip of his finger, but regrew it (below) supposedly by using special powder made from pig extract.