The cost of war isn’t just the monetary balance sheet calculations of bullets and tanks. It is also, and more importantly, the cost in human lives and life changing injuries. The costs associated with the missiles and Hummers are for the most part a short-term cost whereas war injuries are a cost that is carried for many, many years.

To help reduce the drain on the armed forces because of war injuries the Pentagon is increasing its funding of what is extreme medicine in the hope to speed up practical solutions being available for soldiers. Solutions like bone-fusing cement and muscle-growing cell scaffolds.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are working on some of the most promising Pentagon-backed medical research projects. Just last month, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen visited the university’s labs to see the science firsthand. And despite the looming threat of a shrinking Pentagon budget, he told them that “10 years doesn’t satisfy any of us,” where clinical trials were concerned.

And that’s exactly what this funding infusion is going to address. Dr. B.J. Costello, the lead researcher behind the university’s bone cement project, told Danger Room that the Pentagon’s contract is meant “to catapult us forward.” Costello’s program was expected to be in human clinical trials in 5-7 years. With the new grant, it’ll be more like 12 months to 2 years.

“We needed more help with the process of FDA approval and associated expenses, which a company would pay for if they were planning to produce and market this science,” he said. “Instead, the Department of Defense is picking up that slack.”

Costello, whose program involves the creation of an injectable compound designed to repair cranio facial bone damage or spur normal bone growth, expects to start trials on 20 patients, most of them veterans, within a year. If those trials go well, they’ll expand to test more people or explore using the cement for different, more serious procedures.

“Right now, we’re looking at mild to moderate injuries,” he said. “But eventually this could treat long bone injuries, or have civilian applications.”

And those applications would be widespread. The bone cement could replace metal plates, repair bone damage from car accidents or assaults, and even regrow entire portions of a human skull.

Source: Wired: Danger Room

image courtesy of Wired