Regrowing or replacing bone lost to disease is tricky and often painful. In a new study Australian researchers have found a relatively simple way to induce stem cells to turn into bone cells quickly and efficiently, using high-frequency sound waves.

Stem cells have enormous medical potential in helping to regenerate various tissues in the body, but bone has proven particularly hard to work with. Bone originates from what are known as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which mostly reside in the bone marrow. Collecting these is a painful procedure, then converting them into bone cells is difficult to scale up to useful levels.

But researchers from RMIT have now found a faster and simpler way to induce MSCs to turn into bone cells. Previous studies have suggested that the vibrations from sound waves can induce cell differentiation, but it typically took over a week with mixed results. These experiments have been limited to low frequencies, and it was thought that higher frequencies would have little benefit. So for the new study, the RMIT team investigated these higher frequencies.

‘The fact that she’s mixed race, and that she’s a woman, that is really important scientifically and really important in terms of the community impact,’ doctor says.

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The new findings were presented on Tuesday at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Denver, Colorado.

University of California, San Francisco AIDS expert Dr Steven Deeks said that “the fact that she’s mixed race, and that she’s a woman, that is really important scientifically and really important in terms of the community impact,” The New York Times reported.

Women account for the majority of global HIV cases but only make up 11 per cent of participants in cure trials. The disease is thought to develop differently in men and women.