In 1965, UCLA surgeon Marshall Urist ground up rabbit bones and demineralized them in acid so that only powder remained. For science to be able to take practical advantage of this wonder, someone would have to isolate the specific factor or factors that caused bone to grow. Finding the answer would take nearly twenty years. The solution of this mystery story has A. Hari Reddi at its center. Reddi is not the only one who helped solve the mystery.
Science is additive and collaborative.
But the contributions of Reddi, who comes to UC Davis from an endowed chair at Johns Hopkins, were pivotal. In his laboratory at Johns Hopkins, and before that at the National Institutes of Health, Reddi struggled with the implications of Urist's results. Reddi persisted at a time in the 1970s and early 1980s when most other scientists had lost interest in what they considered a hopeless quest. Mass. Ultimately, the solution would come from the biotechnology industry, but not before Reddi and his colleagues had squeezed clues from the dry bones - clues that would later allow him to embark on an ambitious program of tissue engineering. In any mystery story, the person at the center has to find his way to the action .