WELLINGTON, Jan. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- A medical breakthrough has been made by New Zealand researchers who have created a material based on keratin -- a protein extracted from wool -- that looks set to revolutionize bone surgery, Sunday Star-Times reported Sunday.

    Bones damaged by trauma or tumors are currently repaired using bone chips harvested from elsewhere in the body -- a process that causes its own complications -- or using synthetics such as titanium, which do not promote bone recovery.

    The new material is strong enough to form a structural repair, but is gradually absorbed by the body and encourages fresh bone togrow back.

    According to Sunday Star-Times, New Zealand sheep farmers' company Wool Equities subsidiary Keratec has acquired the rights to the product from the Otago University's corporate arm, Otago Innovation Ltd, and is working on commercializing it to service a market estimated to be worth at least 400 million US dollars by 2007.

    The ground-breaking research was initiated by Dr George Dias atOtago University's anatomy and structural biology department. A former maxillo-facial surgeon, Dias was driven to work on bone substitutes by the shortcomings of existing technology.

    "I thought it would be a huge boon to everyone if there was a good artificial bone product that behaved like someone's own bone," Dias was quoted as saying.

    "One day I was looking at my fingernails, which are made of keratin, and thought this would be an ideal material to use as a bone substitute," he said.

    Keratin is a core component of hair -- wool, for example, is about 95 percent keratin protein -- and has useful biological and physical properties that make it ideal as a potential bone substitute. But there was a great deal of work to be done to develop a viable product, according to Dias.

    Keratec Research Manager Dr Rob Kelly said "we understood the potential of keratin as a material in those applications, but it is important not to underestimate the technical hurdles we had to overcome."

    "We've been able to do something no one has been able to do before," he said. Enditem