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Biotech Science

Scientists Re-grow Dental Enamel 60

Posted by Hemos from the soon-my-yellow-teeth-will-be-purple- dept.
A reader at Cloning Resources writes "Dental enamel is the hardest tissue produced by the body. It cannot regenerate itself, because it is formed by a layer of cells that is lost by the time the tooth appears in the mouth. The enamel spends the remainder of its lifetime vulnerable to wear, damage, and decay. In hopes of eventually replacing teeth, scientists from Japan have developed a new method for growing dental enamel."
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Scientists Re-grow Dental Enamel More

Scientists Re-grow Dental Enamel

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  • A long way to go (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zeropointburn ( 975618 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @07:39AM (#18486273) Journal
    Like all genetic regrowth techniques, this one has a long way to go before it could be used in humans. At present, it involves using pig cells incubated in the abdominal tissue of living rats. Fascinating, to be sure, but not quite mainstream yet.
    It is interesting that this group is using collagen sponges as scaffolding; I'm glad to hear research has continued with that technique to the point that it is functional for growing complex tissues.
    This is certainly promising; the step from here to fully-regrown teeth is not overwhelming. Still, I wouldn't bet on your Coca-Cola stocks skyrocketing just yet.

    • Re:A long way to go (Score:4, Funny)

      by jamesh ( 87723 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @07:54AM (#18486343)

      At present, it involves using pig cells incubated in the abdominal tissue of living rats

      Hmmmm... for some reason I am reminded of haggis...

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Rob T Firefly ( 844560 )
        On the other hand, haggis will probably be one of the few foods that can overpower the intrinsic taste of teeth made from piggy cells basted in rat guts.

      • At present, it involves using pig cells incubated in the abdominal tissue of living rats

        Hmmmm... for some reason I am reminded of haggis...
        ... self-chewing haggis...
    • true, pig cells and rats are cheap... rats are a self-sustaining resource in research, you don't even have to feed them their whole life... just until they reach maturity or whatever stage you plan to use them at.

      This is good news... it's more than just theory now so just a few more years to a viable product we can all benefit from (it'll be available to the Japanese next year and the US in 2017 ;-)

    • This is certainly promising; the step from here to fully-regrown teeth is not overwhelming.
      Very true. They already have bone graft procedures for replacing teeth. Looks like this will just make it more complete.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Almost-Retired ( 637760 )
      Well now, to speed up their research, lets recommend that they advertise for people like me, who had this regenerative ability to regrow teeth from the gitgo, and do research on them to find out how they did it?

      Does anyone know how to contact these people?

      Taking advantage of that in humans would seem to show a way to shortcut all this animal experimentation. I could do this for about the first 40 years of my life. The growth didn't seem to be as hard as it could have been, but broken teeth were not a probl
  • Aside from the article submitter copying and pasting the first paragraph of the article into the submission...

    I have tongue rings, and my enamel wore down because of them. Which makes me sad. I digress.

    Enamel fillings, instead of metal? Rock.

    TFA mentions replacing whole teeth? I can see this catching on with old people.

    Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if you could grow a layer of white enamel over the yellow enamel. Then, smokers wouldn't need to go buy whitening strips anymore!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by shambalagoon ( 714768 )
      Their teeth would just keep getting bigger.. and bigger..

    • That is the really sad thing about tongue piercings and mouth piercings that nobody tells you about before you get them.

      Unless they're properly sized, your teeth will get worn and chipped. I chipped a molar a week after I had my tongue pierced.

      Regarding the technique in the article, I think a better solution for many people is to figure out how to stimulate the growth of completely new teeth in adults, yank 'em all, and have all new ones grow in place. Especially if you can decide to omit extra mol

      • I'm fairly certain that even if a tongue piercing is properly sized, your teeth will be worn away. Every time you rub the barbell against your teeth, you wear away at the enamel. Some people do this as a nervous habit, some people do it in their sleep, some people do it just to make clinking noises, and sometimes it just happens accidentally. The end result is the same: the enamel gets worn down. Acrylic balls may not cause the problem because they are softer, but I don't know one way or the other for s
      • That is the really sad thing about tongue piercings and mouth piercings that nobody tells you about before you get them.

        What? JFGI [google.com].

        Do you mean those marketing the product didn't tell you about the risks or that you didn't do any research?

        Lesson 1: Don't believe people trying to sell you something
        Lesson 2: Cosmetic body alterations are almost never a good idea.

        These used to fall under the heading of 'common sense'.
      • The problem with your suggestion is that, according to TFA, the enamel producing cells are nonexistant in adults.

        It seems more straightforward to the patient to simply implant teeth rather than trying to implant specialized enamel growth cells, and then stimulate them in tandem with the the tooth-growth cells. Of course, it may turn out to be easier than implanting a whole tooth, especially where the gums have already covered the implantation site, but I doubt it, given the success rate [fpnotebook.com] of reimplanting dis

  • Very promising (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Looce ( 1062620 )
    This is a godsend for those people who grit their teeth involuntarily at night, like my father. The enamel on his teeth is most likely all gone already. (And those people who are nervous before exams in school and grit their teeth, etc.)

    And, who knows, we might even be able to avoid filling teeth in the future; just apply/create some enamel in a cavity after burning the bacteria, neutralising the acid and stuff like that.

  • On the other side of the coin... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jamesh ( 87723 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @07:58AM (#18486363)
    ... I was thinking as I was having my wisdom teeth removed that it would be nice if it could be possible to artificially trigger the same response that causes the 'baby' teeth to fall out, maybe by injecting something in the root to cause it to disolve. Much less blood, pain, and (potential) nerve damage.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by harks ( 534599 )
      I thought I heard once that baby teeth were of different construction - they have a shallower root. Something like that.

    • Re:On the other side of the coin... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Alicat1194 ( 970019 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @09:51AM (#18487303)
      As far as I know, baby teeth don't so much fall out, as they are pushed out by the adult teeth growing up from below (I used to work with a girl who still had some of her baby teeth, as for some reason she never grew adult teeth to replace them)

      • baby teeth resorb (Score:3, Interesting)

        by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *
        As far as I know, baby teeth don't so much fall out, as they are pushed out by the adult teeth growing up from below

        Sort of. The pressure from the adult teeth cause the roots of the baby teeth to dissolve. A baby tooth falling out doesn't look like an extracted tooth - the root is almost gone by time it falls out.

        Let's see Wikipedia must have something on this.... ah, here:

        The erupting permanent teeth causes root resorption, where the permanent teeth push down on the roots of the deciduous teeth causing

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by acroyear ( 5882 )
          If it works. In my case, at least on my lower jaw, the roots were so strong they pushed the incoming adult teeth behind them and the baby teeth needed to be extracted. Their roots were completely undamaged.

          On the other hand, the idea of being able to reconstruct adult teeth is very useful over our current artificial forms of patch-work. The trick with enamle, of course, is to get it replaced before the rest of the tooth starts decaying. One probably couldn't put it back on a filling.
  • http://www.dailyhaha.com/_pics/nice_teef.jpg [dailyhaha.com]
    But seriously, I've lost most of the enamel at my gum line (apparently due to brushing too virorously!), I've had one root canal (== dead tooth), and several big fillings. I've been eagerly awaiting someone to figure out how to grow new teeth so that when I yawn, people aren't blinded by sunlight refelcting off all the silver in my mouth.

  • Moo (Score:1)

    by Chacham ( 981 )
    In the emergent field of tooth-tissue engineering, several groups have developed their own approaches.

    IOW, there are many tries, but this one's got teeth to it?

  • But I thought this was already being worked on? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stephencrane ( 771345 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @08:16AM (#18486481)

    There was an article last year about someone coming up with using ultrasonic waves to trigger regrowth of teeth.

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/06062 8234304.htm [sciencedaily.com]

    This seems much more along, and less complicated. I imagine a new use for an ultrasonic transducer is easier to get approved than transgenic tissue grafting.

    I really wish there was some central repository of active studies, with an easy way to grade their progress and potential oversight burden. I imagine being able to subscribe to studies and experiments, and receiving updates when available. The most irritating thing about 'scientific discovery' news articles is the fickle nature of the media to keep people in the loop on it. Whenever a bold claim is made, it becomes news. But the incremental progress is not sexy, so you never hear of it again. How many 'promising' cures for various cancers have we heard of, only to never heard of them again?

    • ++ Informative

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by TeknoHog ( 164938 )

      There was an article last year about someone coming up with using ultrasonic waves to trigger regrowth of teeth.

      AFAIK, it uses a rather well-known effect for stimulating bone growth, the same by which e.g. running makes your leg bones stronger. The article mentions uses related to the jaw and the roots of teeth, both of which are basically bone. On the other hand, enamel is a completely different tissue that cannot regenerate in adults because the cells are no longer around, as explained in the main article.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcapel ( 913969 )

      I imagine being able to subscribe to studies and experiments, and receiving updates when available. The most irritating thing about 'scientific discovery' news articles is the fickle nature of the media to keep people in the loop on it.

      It sounds like what you want is a real scientific journal instead of whatever bastardized version the mainstream press decides to feed you. Nature is always a good one, and perhaps something on medical technology.

      Go Primary Sources!

  • Cool but nasty (Score:4, Interesting)

    by J05H ( 5625 ) on Monday March 26, 2007 @11:28AM (#18488303)
    They propagated the cell-sponge matrix inside rat's abdomens. And they want that in your mouth? Ick. Biotech has a strong gross-out factor sometimes. They put dead people's bones in living people and use cow bone for reconstruction? Are we becoming vampires in a hi-tech manner?

    Josh
    • Not vampires; ghouls. Get it straight, my zombie brother-cousin-pet.
    • Mod parent retarded. Where do you think insulin injections came/comes from?

      Provided you sterilize the thing properly what does it matter where it grew?

      Tom
    • I have news for you. Biology is icky, gross, and nasty in general. That's just the way it is.
      • Biology is amazing and cool in general. It's just that many humans haven't come to terms with the fact that they are biological creatures. Notice how the GP references artificial blood as though this would somehow be an intrinsically better solution than natural biological blood. This is just an anti-biology prejudice that comes from denying one's human and animal nature.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by juhaz ( 110830 )
          How does it come from denying your human nature and animal nature?

          I can see how someone who believes he's a mirror image of an almighty god would think he's perfect as is and can't be improved.

          But if anything, acknowledging the fact that one is merely an animal should make one more likely to regard artificial as potentially better, since "natural" is just another word for "whatever crap evolution tacked together that was barely good enough to survive". Having few actually working and "intelligently designed
          • I agree that artificial can "potentially" be better. But we're a long way from realizing that potential for most things having to do with living biological entities. "Whatever crap evolution tacked together" (over billions of years, mind you) includes a lot of stuff we don't fully understand. So at the moment, the bias that artificial is better doesn't usually make sense, at least when the intelligences doing the design are us. (Now advanced *alien* artificial blood, that's good stuff! ;)

            Anyone who's a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by J05H ( 5625 )
          Thanks for all the replies-

          biology is icky, sticky, nasty, beautiful. Biology is the most interesting thing in the universe. Open heart surgery or gastroentroscopy still gross me out. Rat abdomens are indeed cleaner than the human mouth. And no, you can't sterilize living tissue, which is what the article was discussing.

          Ghouls.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0x0000 ( 140863 )

      Are we becoming vampires in a hi-tech manner?

      No, if we were really high tech about it, we'd just use an energy beam to suck the life forces directly out of the beasties and feed it directly into an implant that would handle all repairs to the organism... we should probably build in a "hypnotize victim and make them a helpless vampire slave" function to this device, as well, if we want to be able to claim to be really hi-tech ...

  • Yet another miraculous health technology for the wealthy. I'm sure that top dental institutes will use the vast wealth of the US to hire some Jap dentists with this technique and keep us at the top of the health care ladder. For the wealthy that is; most of the population can't afford even basic dental work or health care nor insurance. For us, there is only the game of waiting for the tooth infection that kills.

    • Perhaps you haven't noticed that many medical advances are initially only available for the rich, then work their way down. If the research isn't done, no one will ever get it.
  • Maybe I'm just missing something, but ceramics have been around for a long time. Couldn't you use ceramics instead of 'home grown' enamel for the same effect? (I'd feel more safe doing that than putting pig teeth incubated in rat guts in my mouth.)
    • You can. The problem is that if you don't get an exact match between the mechanical properties (hardness, ductility, etc) of the tooth and the filling, one or the other will get damaged over time.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      It doesn't stick on very well.

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