Artificial joints normally last 12 to 13 years, but regenerative cartilage could make them obsolete, according to Tetsuya Tateishi, a professor at the University of Tokyo.

Toward the end of the 1990s, a U.S. researcher discovered an "all-purpose cell" that could grow in any part of the human body. In theory, the cell could reproduce not only livers and kidneys, but also hands and feet.

Tateishi said the problem of rejecting new tissue -- a big obstacle to organ transplants -- could be resolved immediately if all-purpose cells incorporating a person's genes were used to regenerate organs.

Major drugmaker Tanabe Seiyaku Co., in a project with Kyoto University's Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences, has succeeded in producing all-purpose cells for monkeys.

Fumio Suzuki, an executive at leading chemical maker Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co., said the market for all-purpose cells could grow to several hundred billion yen.

Tanabe hopes to treat people with Parkinson's disease by utilizing the results of its research with the National Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research at Tsukuba Academic New Town in Ibaraki Prefecture.

The institute, which belongs to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, is scheduled to start building facilities for research and development of tissue engineering at a cost of 3 billion yen next year in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture.

As a supervising researcher at the institute, Tateishi is busy grappling with the development of regenerative cartilage.

At the same time, he is pressing for the promotion of tissue regeneration as a business.

He said that Japan has caught up with the United States in terms of funding, referring to the 10.8 billion yen the government allocated to research on tissue engineering in the fiscal 2000 budget.

Tateishi has worked out an arrangement with three companies, including Kanegafuchi Chemical Industry Co., to jointly develop the cartilage.