Dentures and dental implants may be a thing of the past! Stem cell research is making some very amazing advances, why not regrow your missing teeth?
Stem cells have the ability to transform and multiply into many different types of cells in the body. These stem cells repair tissue by dividing continually either as a new stem cell or a cell with a more specific job. For instance as a red blood cell, skin cell, or muscle cell. In the future people will be able to have their missing teeth replaced with ones that have been grown from cells taken from their own mouth! Science is amazing!
These hybrid teeth have already been successful in mice trials. All they had to do was combine human gum cells and stem cells from mouse teeth in order to grow them in lab mice. How interesting is that? This could lead to dentures being completely unnecessary. Why have dentures when you can just grow your own new teeth?
Professor Paul Sharpe who led research on this at King’s College London’s dental institute says that:
“These easily accessible epithelial cells are thus a realistic source for consideration in human bio-tooth formation. The next major challenge is to identify a way to culture adult human mesenchymal cells to be tooth-inducing, as at the moment we can only make embryonic mesenchymal cells do this.”
“What is required is the identification of adult sources of human epithelial and mesenchymal cells that can be obtained in sufficient numbers to make bio-tooth formation a viable alternative to dental implants,”
How amazing would it be to just grow more teeth instead of getting dental implants or dentures? This is going to open so many doors in the dental community it is unreal. Would you consider growing hybrid teeth?