HEALTH CARE

Bare Bones: Are you suffering from an overpowering desire to know just how human bones are formed?

If so, then ICN Biomedicals, a subsidiary of ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc., has just the chemical for you.

ICN Biomedicals said it is now selling tubulin, a protein that is a necessary component in cell structure and the formation of new cells.

So far so good.

But more importantly, ICN Biomedicals officials said, it is also a component of the human body that promotes bone, cartilage and connective tissue growth.

Tubulin will be sold by laboratories involved in trying to discover how those bodily systems work--or rather don’t work. By understanding how bones and other parts of the body work properly, researchers hope to ultimately understand how they become cancerous.