Everyone wants a Hollywood Smile but not everyone is born
with one.
Dentures and dental implants may soon become a thing of
the past. Stem cell research is making it possible to regrow your missing
teeth!
Stem cells are no ordinary cells. They have the
extraordinary ability to multiply and transform into many different types of
cells in the body. They repair tissues by dividing continually either as a new
stem cell or as a cell with a more specialized job, such as a red blood cell, a
skin cell, or a muscle cell.
People may in future be able to have missing or diseased
teeth replaced with ones grown from cells taken from their own mouth,
scientists have predicted.
Hybrid teeth created by combining human gum cells and
stem cells from mouse teeth have been grown in laboratory mice by researchers
who hope the work could lead to dentures being superseded by new teeth grown on
a patient’s jaw.
The mixture of mouse and human cells was transplanted
into adult mouse kidneys and grew into recognisable tooth structures coated in
enamel with viable developing roots, according to a study published in the
Journal Of Dental Research.
Two kinds of cell were used to make the bioengineered
teeth. Epithelial “surface lining” cells were taken from human gum tissue and
mesenchymal stem cells from the mouse embryos.
Mesenchymal cells can develop into a range of different
tissues, including bone, cartilage and fat.
Professor Paul Sharpe, who led the research at King’s College
London’s dental institute, said: “Epithelial cells derived from adult human gum
tissue are capable of responding to tooth-inducing signals from embryonic tooth
mesenchyme in an appropriate way to contribute to tooth crown and root
formation and give rise to relevant differentiated cell types, following
in-vitro culture.
“These easily accessible epithelial cells are thus a
realistic source for consideration in human biotooth 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.”
Previous research has shown that embryonic teeth are
capable of developing normally in the adult mouth.
“What is required is the identification of adult sources
of human epithelial and mesenchymal cells that can be obtained in sufficient
numbers to make biotooth formation a viable alternative to dental implants,”
said Sharpe.
According to a study published in the latest Journal of
Dental Research, a new tissue regeneration technique may allow people to simply
regrow a new set of pearly whites.
Source : davidwolfe.com