New material mimics Mother Nature.

Football players who injure their knees carrying the pigskin someday may get medical help from pig intestines. Biomedical researchers at Purdue University have developed a material from the animals' intestines that, when inserted into the human body, may help it reconstruct a variety of damaged tissues, such as torn ligaments or tendons, diseased urinary bladders, or severely burned skin.

"The fundamental principle behind this material is that, once inserted into the body, it gets broken down and rebuilt into something that resembles the original tissue or organ," explains Stephen F. Badylak, director of research for Purdue's Hillenbrand Biomedical Engineering Center and coordinator for the project.

The material, called small-intestinal submucosa (SIS), is derived from a middle layer of the small intestine of pigs. Once this layer of intestine is removed, it can be sterilized and molded into different forms, such as tubes or sheets, or stored for future use. Though SIS comes from a biological source, to date there have been no problems with rejection.

"We're using a mixture of molecules developed and organized by Mother Nature. SIS is a composite of connective tissues that include collagen and proteins and various other bioactive molecules that we have not fully characterized." Animal studies show that, when inserted into a body, these molecules are capable of interacting with host cells, sending and receiving signals that tell the material how to "perform"...