Healthy Friday: In the not so distant future we will be able to grow new teeth
A team of scientists from Columbia University led by Dr Jeremy Mao have discovered how to grow new teeth in nine weeks. It could make dental implants a thing of the past.
Dr Mao’s team have found a way of building a ‘scaffold’ for a tooth made of stem cells stimulating the growth of a new tooth using DNA. The new tooth grows over this template in nine weeks.
Dr Mao pioneered this technique at Columbia University’s Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory. First, a 3D scaffold is composed; then, it is implanted in the mouth. In the nine weeks after implantation, stem cells migrate to the scaffold and initiate the growth of new dental tissue.
“The missing tooth is replaced with stem cells from your body, and the tooth starts merging to the surrounding tissue on its own. This boosts the regeneration process and results in regrowth of the tooth in a record time,” Dr Mao explains.
Stem cell research will treat everything
This method makes the most of stem cell research that has been gaining momentum in recent years. Stem cell research is being used to treat everything from broken bones to genetic disorders.
The procedure is still in the research stage and is not available to the public yet, but it should make it into dental surgeries in the not so distant future.
This discovery helps the body regrow teeth in the mouth on its own. It could mean the end of expensive dental surgery to replace missing or broken teeth.
