Four doctors are making a name for themselves in medical research. They all graduated from Creighton University and they grew up together.

Omaha's Vacanti brothers now call Boston home. All are doctors.

Dr. Frank Vacanti says, "I started working on the spinal cord stroke work back in 1981."

Dr. Frank Vacanti is the youngest of the four and while his brothers are focused together in one area, Fank is on his own in terms of research.

He says, "I choose to not do what everybody else is doing."

Dr. Vacanti has focused on an attribute of the salamander. If it suffered a spinal injury, it has the innate ability to repair the damaged tissue and make itself whole again. If a person were to experience the same injury the cells would form scar tissue and the spinal damage would be permanent.

Dr. Vacanti hopes the change that. He's working with cells from a rat that would normally scar and he says, "If they're removed from the environment of the mammal and looked at in a dish, they re-differentiate into spinal tissue."

There might also be another benefit from Dr. Vacanti's research. He developed a material similar to a soft contact lens. Cells don't treat it as foreign to the body and it might eventually be used to keep burn victims from scarring.

The doctor says, "When you need a temporary covering for the burn while you're waiting to graft it, you cover it up with this. Then when you do your graft, you take this off, put your graft on. It seems to be the normal tissue instead of scar tissue."

Dr. Vacanti has no funding for his research. He's an anesthesiologist by day and lone researcher at night and on weekends.

Dr. Vacanti's three brothers are making progress in another area of research in Boston. One day if you need a vital organ like a liver or a heart, they hope to be able to create one for you using your own cells.