{"id":9318,"date":"2013-12-10T10:23:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T18:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=9318"},"modified":"2015-04-18T01:54:42","modified_gmt":"2015-04-18T08:54:42","slug":"how-nanotechnology-can-trick-the-body-into-accepting-fake-bones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/how-nanotechnology-can-trick-the-body-into-accepting-fake-bones","title":{"rendered":"How nanotechnology can trick the body into accepting fake bones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"blog-byline-kick\"><span itemprop=\"author\" itemscope=\"\" itemtype=\"http:\/\/schema.org\/Person\"><span itemprop=\"name\"><a class=\"contributor\" itemprop=\"url\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/profile\/megan-cully\" rel=\"author\">Megan Cully<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Altering the surface of orthopaedic implants has already helped patients \u2013 and nanotech can fight infections too<\/p>\n<p>One of medicine\u2019s primary objectives is to trick the body into doing something it doesn\u2019t want to do. We try to convince our immune systems to attack cancer cells (our immune systems don\u2019t normally attack our own bodies), we try to convince neurons to regrow (another unnatural phenomenon), and we try to convince the body to accept foreign bits, such as someone else\u2019s kidney or a fake bone. In order to accomplish this, we try to make parts of our bodies we don\u2019t want, such as cancers, look foreign. We try to make foreign bits that we do want, such as orthopaedic implants, look natural. <a title=\"More from the Guardian on Nanotechnology\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/nanotechnology\">Nanotechnology<\/a>, as you might have guessed, can help us do just that.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/small-world\/2013\/dec\/10\/nanotechnology-body-fake-bones-orthopaedic-implants\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Megan Cully Altering the surface of orthopaedic implants has already helped patients \u2013 and nanotech can fight infections too One of medicine\u2019s primary objectives is to trick the body into doing something it doesn\u2019t want to do. We try to convince our immune systems to attack cancer cells (our immune systems don\u2019t normally attack our [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health","category-nanotechnology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}