A couple of weeks back the Wall Street Journal reported on the first organ grown in vivo from stem cells — a tooth in the mouth of a mouse. Reader cdrpsab spotted the news on the MedGadget blog; the research had been reported earlier in the PNAS. From the WSJ: "The researchers at the Tokyo University of Science created a set of cells that contained genetic instructions to build a tooth, and then implanted this 'tooth germ' into the mouse's empty tooth socket. The tooth grew out of the socket and through the gums, as a natural tooth would. Once the engineered tooth matured, after 11 weeks, it had a similar shape, hardness and response to pain or stress as a natural tooth, and worked equally well for chewing. The researchers suggested that using similar techniques in humans could restore function to patients with organ failure."
Of course, we all grow teeth at the beginning of our lives, but this friend of mine grew a new tooth when he was in his thirties. He had an extraction, and about two years later, a new one came in. He wasn't one of those people who start out with three ranks of teeth (that's pretty rare too, but not quite as rare a growing a new one as an adult. I think his case got written up in some dental journal.
The only problem is, we were not supposed to live past the 40. Natural evolution can't adapt in 100 years. This is why we want to accelerate stuff now.:)
I mean, who in his right mind thinks that our teeth are unable to withstand the very thing they are made for and are optimized to do since the dawn of times?
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with physical anthropology, that's who. Back in the days when people lived as you advocate, they rarely made it to 40, and tooth loss was a major factor in their deaths.
but you know what, if we could genetically turn on the tooth regrowing function in our bodies to give us our third set of teeth at say age 40 global health would go up drastically.
Most people have a incredibly horrid mess in their mouth. Dentistry is horribly overpriced and Dental insurance in the developed world is worthless so most people do not take care of their teeth. Your teeth health is directly coupled to your general health. If you have a mouth full of rotten and abscessed teeth your general health is going down, plus the continuous pain can easily be mis diagnosed as depression.
The researchers suggested that using similar techniques in humans could restore function to patients with organ failure."
The submitter got me, I have to admit. I was reading the summary, thinking that it would end with "could allow humans to regrow teeth"... but they pulled a zigzag, and went a different direction. Organs. Wow. Did M. Knight Shamalyan write this summary?
Honestly, I don't think that calling a tooth an organ is very much of a stretch. Teeth have their own blood vessels and nerves, and consist of a large proportion of living tissue. This [answers.com] little blurb provides what I think is a convincing, if hardly exhaustive, argument that teeth are organs.
I can see Toonol's worries here. The ovaries contain single cells that ought to grow into a whole being when fertilized. Sometimes, these go wrong, and you get something else. These other things are usually hair, teeth, or occasionally eyes (eeww!). However, you don't get a fingernail or a kidney or a brain. This is probably because hair, teeth and eyes can be 'seeded' from a single cell, where other organs probably develop from a coordinated modification of a set of cells.
This is not to say that there isn't come magic genetic 'sudo' command that allows you to ask for a left kidney, medium size, but we haven't seen any sign of it yet.
Perhaps we can't "seed" a more complex organ such as a kidney, (Although I thought that eyes were pretty damn complex organs, what with the lenses and rods and cones and such.) but perhaps through study we can come to understand the more complex interactions of genomes that creates a kidney or a liver and one day grow replacement parts without the ghoulish proposition of cloned complete human "parts farms".
Of course, we all know that most of the research is going to end up in the breast augmentation and hai
The problem with growing organs is that in order to get cells to multiply you have to disable certain genes in those cells, or at least reset their counters. Which genes ? Well those that guard against cancer...
Our bodies go to great lengths to prevent cells from multiplying anywhere and it is only allowed by the human DNA in very specific cases : blood production in the bone marrow, when a woman becomes pregnant, and just before a woman gives birth. There are others, but those are major modifications of human cell's normal reproduction. The body goes to great lengths to prevent cell division in organs once a human being is born, instead choosing to do the bulk of the necessary divisions before birth and then letting those already-existing cells enlarge instead of divide to make a child grow. That's not to say there is no cell division involved in growing a child, but a lot less than you'd think from the size difference.
All 3 of those exceptions are also major causes of cancer : leukemia, endometrial cancer and breast cancer.
Getting stuff to grow is easy, just kill of the p70 gene. Getting stuff to grow safely is hard. Very very hard. Loads of research still need to be done before this can really be risked in a live human being.
Solid. References. Now. (For the statement that a majority of growth to maturity just involves enlarging existing cells.) BTW, have you ever heard of osteoblasts and osteoclasts? Those cells are actively renewed and renewing bone throughout life, although they decline with age. You are certainly right that extremely rapid and "deep" division is limited in most organs, as you only need a few divisions and the wonderful gift of exponential growth to get just about any number of cells. The problem of organ regeneration is of course that the respecialization requires a number of "cell generations" in itself. There are some risks involved here, but the current techniques are not simply hardwiring the "on" mode for cell division. In fact, to get any real organ you need the natural "stop" modes and directed apoptosis just as much as you need the ability to start cell division in the first place.
My ex was a biologist, and told me that the way the healing of wounds is implemented is that cells multiply when there aren't other cells next to them. If there is a hole, then the cells will divide to fill in the gap, with the signal to stop occuring when the dividing cells finally close up the hole.
The problem is that that signal to stop gets screwed up somehow sometimes - either it's not produced, or its ignored. There is only a small probability of this happening, but if you are repeatedly wounded, then the probability increases.
Some people have a habit of biting the insides of their cheeks. I understand that doing so can cause cancers where you bite.
"Which genes ? Well those that guard against cancer..."
Which brings up an interesting point... Since our lives depend critically on the controlled death (apoptosis) of cells. A lot of people don't fully grasp that controlled death of cells is absolutely critical to maintaining limb, bodily form, and organ integrity (eyes, hands, creating fingers)
You can see what happens here when when apoptosis goes wrong:
You don't need to be suffering from periodontal disease to know that missing or otherwise bad teeth are real enough issues for ordinary people. With the possible exception of friends from across the pond, of course.;-)
On the contrary, this will allow us to extract teeth and have new ones grown in, thereby providing the tooth fairy with an abundant supply of teeth. However beneficial this may be to the tooth fairy, it is actually detrimental to us. With the recession the way it is, countless families will resort to extracting their teeth to provide supplemental income from the quarters the tooth fairy leaves. Obviously, this will lead to a surge in the money supply and a subsequent devaluation of the dollar. This has bad
I don't know about anyone else's family, but a quarter hasn't been good enough in my family since I was a kid in the 1980s. These days, the usual price for one tooth is $2. The tooth fairy usually gives it in the form of a $2 bill, depending on whether or not she had time to go to the bank and get a $2 bill before the tooth fell out.
Mr. Scientist, if you happen to get around to doing something like this for a human pancreas, could I order one please? Blood type B+, if it's not too much trouble. DNA available on request.
Yours sincerely,
Dean, on behalf of millions of Type I diabetics
P.S. I *love* hearing about this stuff. The potential for helping millions is incredible.
If you are type 1 then your immune system would destroy any pancreatic islet cells implanted. Type 2 diabetics who are insulin resistant with a burnt out pancreas would be choicer targets for this type of therapy. Type 1 diabetics will be waiting for an immunological solution first.
As a Type 1 diabetic myself it really makes my day when something new and cool like this pops up on my screen. I vaguely remember some doctor-or-some-such saying a few years back that diabetes is a disease that should have been cured (or at least fixable) 30 years ago. If not for the fact that medical companies have an income from insulin, needles, and other paraphernalia as stable as WoW subscriptions and probably a goodly bit bigger, it probably would have. Though I am pleased to see there have been actua
Since I don't see responses saying the sort of things I'd say, I'll go ahead and say what I was going to say.
Retroviral treatment sometimes works. The problem is we don't have any way of telling where to put the genes we're inserting, and if they insert in the wrong place, the cell could do nasty things: become cancerous, start pumping out odd hormones, start pumping out herpesvirus, are a few that come to mind. It can be done, and has been done, but it's not easy.
No, I don't have diabetes, but my girlfriend does. Believe me, I understand that it can be miserable and painful. And I also know about multitude of complications resulting from diabetes (like feet rotting and falling off or kidney diseases).
Transplantation of the whole pancreas is possible. It's actually routinely performed right now. However, bear in mind that 1 year survival is about 95% and 10% patients still have to use insulin injections even after transplantation. And don't forget lifetime use of imm
I seem to recall reading an article many years ago about a trial in the UK in which this same technique was working quite well on humans. Of course I can't seem to track down the article now, and the closest thing I did find was this article [innovations-report.com] from five years ago about a business providing this service. Unfortunately, it only muddies the waters further by including the line "To date, no companies or research groups in the world have been able to demonstrate the formation of a living, natural tooth." Does any
They're horrible, and I live in the United States, a culture where teeth are perfect and white or you are nothing. My wife has beautiful teeth, and despite the fact that we have nearly identical brushing and dental care habits, my teeth are horrid, yellow, and falling to pieces, hers are beautiful, white, and basically no cavities.
Sorry - not all teeth are created equal.
So here I am, 30-something, fairly affluent, and having horrid teeth. You think I wouldn't hesitate to spend a few Gs replacing my craptastic old teeth with new teeth with zero chance of rejection? Sure, they will go yellow quickly, just like the last ones did, but that means I'm in my 80s or later before my teeth are in any way unusual. And effectively, that means good teeth for life.
I've been waiting for this kind of treatment. Where do I sign up?
You sign up with the people who aren't religious zealots, believing that life begins at conception and preventing the use of embrionic stem cells. You might believe that too, but I don't believe anyone with any religious affiliation or indoctrination belongs in Politics.
Creating stem cells from other tissues is possible, but adds extra costs. We all know how pharmaceutical companies love to throw money away, don't we...
Seriously, though, this is a lab test. Human trials are so far into the future your kid
Question. Did you grow up somewhere drinking naturally non-fluoridated water? Did your land have a well rather than a hookup to city / county water supply?
I also have horrid teeth (not as bad as yours sound but still bad enough) and I grew up without fluoride treatments or fluoridated water - just wondering if there is a correlation at least. Hopefully it is also causation and I can worry less about dental bills for my kids as they grow up (even with replacement teeth, keeping the original teeth in good shape is still cheaper).
Well, not entirely, but seriously - they've come up with a way to grow new teeth for mammals.
Personally, I would love it if I could go to the dentist and have him replace some of my bad teeth with new ones. One or two at a time would be fine.
Instead of getting fake teeth or fillings when you've abused your teeth to the point where the enamel on the outside of the tooth has worn away, exposing the dentine... if I could get those replaced? I'd almost be willing to kill for that.
Sure, it'd take time to regrow a new tooth, but I could live with that.
So yeah, screw growing new organs - get me some new teeth!
You are not looking far enuff. For instance why not having two sets - one for wify one for girlfriend? If one grows such additional organ on one's knee it would t hen give quite new meaning to the phrase" f.k yourself in knee'.
I have a friend who grew a tooth. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, we all grow teeth at the beginning of our lives, but this friend of mine grew a new tooth when he was in his thirties. He had an extraction, and about two years later, a new one came in. He wasn't one of those people who start out with three ranks of teeth (that's pretty rare too, but not quite as rare a growing a new one as an adult. I think his case got written up in some dental journal.
-jcr
Re:I have a friend who grew a tooth. (Score:5, Funny)
Got a bit of shark in him, eh?
Parent
Re:I have a friend who grew a tooth. (Score:5, Funny)
Not that I know of, but he wins more than he loses at poker.
-jcr
Parent
how'd you know? (Score:4, Funny)
did you see the laser beam on his head?
Parent
Re:I have a friend who grew a tooth. (Score:5, Funny)
Got a bit of shark in him, eh?
jcr: "No, Why?"
shark: "Does he want some?"
*rimshot*
Parent
Re:I have a friend who grew a tooth. (Score:4, Informative)
It wouldn't be bad if humans were able to grow new teeth every thirty to forty years or so.
Teeth wear down, cracks and so on so it would sure not be bad.
Parent
Re:I have a friend who grew a tooth. (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Actually yeah. If you look to the animal kingdom you will find that old animals do indeed have worn down teeth that are no longer sharp and effective.
Humans wear out joints, spines, feet, wrists, hearts, livers, kidneys, etc from those parts just doing what they were meant to do.
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I mean, who in his right mind thinks that our teeth are unable to withstand the very thing they are made for and are optimized to do since the dawn of times?
Anyone with even a passing familiarity with physical anthropology, that's who. Back in the days when people lived as you advocate, they rarely made it to 40, and tooth loss was a major factor in their deaths.
-jcr
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Re:I have a friend who grew a tooth. (Score:4, Insightful)
but you know what, if we could genetically turn on the tooth regrowing function in our bodies to give us our third set of teeth at say age 40 global health would go up drastically.
Most people have a incredibly horrid mess in their mouth. Dentistry is horribly overpriced and Dental insurance in the developed world is worthless so most people do not take care of their teeth. Your teeth health is directly coupled to your general health. If you have a mouth full of rotten and abscessed teeth your general health is going down, plus the continuous pain can easily be mis diagnosed as depression.
Parent
Fully Functional Bioengineered Tooth Growing (Score:2, Funny)
Strange Leap (Score:5, Funny)
The submitter got me, I have to admit. I was reading the summary, thinking that it would end with "could allow humans to regrow teeth"... but they pulled a zigzag, and went a different direction. Organs. Wow. Did M. Knight Shamalyan write this summary?
Re:Strange Leap (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Strange Leap (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see Toonol's worries here. The ovaries contain single cells that ought to grow into a whole being when fertilized. Sometimes, these go wrong, and you get something else. These other things are usually hair, teeth, or occasionally eyes (eeww!). However, you don't get a fingernail or a kidney or a brain. This is probably because hair, teeth and eyes can be 'seeded' from a single cell, where other organs probably develop from a coordinated modification of a set of cells.
This is not to say that there isn't come magic genetic 'sudo' command that allows you to ask for a left kidney, medium size, but we haven't seen any sign of it yet.
Parent
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Perhaps we can't "seed" a more complex organ such as a kidney, (Although I thought that eyes were pretty damn complex organs, what with the lenses and rods and cones and such.) but perhaps through study we can come to understand the more complex interactions of genomes that creates a kidney or a liver and one day grow replacement parts without the ghoulish proposition of cloned complete human "parts farms".
Of course, we all know that most of the research is going to end up in the breast augmentation and hai
Re:Strange Leap (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with growing organs is that in order to get cells to multiply you have to disable certain genes in those cells, or at least reset their counters. Which genes ? Well those that guard against cancer ...
Our bodies go to great lengths to prevent cells from multiplying anywhere and it is only allowed by the human DNA in very specific cases : blood production in the bone marrow, when a woman becomes pregnant, and just before a woman gives birth. There are others, but those are major modifications of human cell's normal reproduction. The body goes to great lengths to prevent cell division in organs once a human being is born, instead choosing to do the bulk of the necessary divisions before birth and then letting those already-existing cells enlarge instead of divide to make a child grow. That's not to say there is no cell division involved in growing a child, but a lot less than you'd think from the size difference.
All 3 of those exceptions are also major causes of cancer : leukemia, endometrial cancer and breast cancer.
Getting stuff to grow is easy, just kill of the p70 gene. Getting stuff to grow safely is hard. Very very hard. Loads of research still need to be done before this can really be risked in a live human being.
Parent
Re:Strange Leap (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Repeated injuries can cause cancer (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Repeated injuries can cause cancer (Score:4, Funny)
*reads this as he massages the inside of his cheek that he bit for the fifth time this year*
Well shit.
Parent
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"Which genes ? Well those that guard against cancer ..."
Which brings up an interesting point... Since our lives depend critically on the controlled death (apoptosis) of cells. A lot of people don't fully grasp that controlled death of cells is absolutely critical to maintaining limb, bodily form, and organ integrity (eyes, hands, creating fingers)
You can see what happens here when when apoptosis goes wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Celldeath.jpg [wikipedia.org]
Thank goodness for controlled cell death.
Organ Transplants? (Score:2, Flamebait)
How about restoring functions to ... teeth?
You don't need to be suffering from periodontal disease to know that missing or otherwise bad teeth are real enough issues for ordinary people. With the possible exception of friends from across the pond, of course. ;-)
It's a scam (Score:4, Funny)
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Human Pancreas? (Score:5, Informative)
Yours sincerely,
Dean, on behalf of millions of Type I diabetics
P.S. I *love* hearing about this stuff. The potential for helping millions is incredible.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are type 1 then your immune system would destroy any pancreatic islet cells implanted. Type 2 diabetics who are insulin resistant with a burnt out pancreas would be choicer targets for this type of therapy. Type 1 diabetics will be waiting for an immunological solution first.
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As a Type 1 diabetic myself it really makes my day when something new and cool like this pops up on my screen. I vaguely remember some doctor-or-some-such saying a few years back that diabetes is a disease that should have been cured (or at least fixable) 30 years ago. If not for the fact that medical companies have an income from insulin, needles, and other paraphernalia as stable as WoW subscriptions and probably a goodly bit bigger, it probably would have. Though I am pleased to see there have been actua
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Retroviral treatment sometimes works. The problem is we don't have any way of telling where to put the genes we're inserting, and if they insert in the wrong place, the cell could do nasty things: become cancerous, start pumping out odd hormones, start pumping out herpesvirus, are a few that come to mind. It can be done, and has been done, but it's not easy.
Replacement of the entire auto-immune
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, I don't have diabetes, but my girlfriend does. Believe me, I understand that it can be miserable and painful. And I also know about multitude of complications resulting from diabetes (like feet rotting and falling off or kidney diseases).
Transplantation of the whole pancreas is possible. It's actually routinely performed right now. However, bear in mind that 1 year survival is about 95% and 10% patients still have to use insulin injections even after transplantation. And don't forget lifetime use of imm
Re:Human Pancreas? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, there are islet cell therapies on the horizon: http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/scireport/chapter7.asp [nih.gov]
Parent
Old News? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Old News? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
I have bad teeth (Score:5, Interesting)
They're horrible, and I live in the United States, a culture where teeth are perfect and white or you are nothing. My wife has beautiful teeth, and despite the fact that we have nearly identical brushing and dental care habits, my teeth are horrid, yellow, and falling to pieces, hers are beautiful, white, and basically no cavities.
Sorry - not all teeth are created equal.
So here I am, 30-something, fairly affluent, and having horrid teeth. You think I wouldn't hesitate to spend a few Gs replacing my craptastic old teeth with new teeth with zero chance of rejection? Sure, they will go yellow quickly, just like the last ones did, but that means I'm in my 80s or later before my teeth are in any way unusual. And effectively, that means good teeth for life.
I've been waiting for this kind of treatment. Where do I sign up?
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Creating stem cells from other tissues is possible, but adds extra costs. We all know how pharmaceutical companies love to throw money away, don't we...
Seriously, though, this is a lab test. Human trials are so far into the future your kid
Re:I have bad teeth (Score:4, Interesting)
Question. Did you grow up somewhere drinking naturally non-fluoridated water? Did your land have a well rather than a hookup to city / county water supply?
I also have horrid teeth (not as bad as yours sound but still bad enough) and I grew up without fluoride treatments or fluoridated water - just wondering if there is a correlation at least. Hopefully it is also causation and I can worry less about dental bills for my kids as they grow up (even with replacement teeth, keeping the original teeth in good shape is still cheaper).
thanks
Parent
Fantastic news... (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder if this treatment will be available through NHS dentists once it is perfected.
ROFLMFAO I crack myself up sometimes.
Tags (Score:3, Informative)
Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.
Toughest tag to parse, EVAR!
Screw growing new organs ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, not entirely, but seriously - they've come up with a way to grow new teeth for mammals.
Personally, I would love it if I could go to the dentist and have him replace some of my bad teeth with new ones. One or two at a time would be fine.
Instead of getting fake teeth or fillings when you've abused your teeth to the point where the enamel on the outside of the tooth has worn away, exposing the dentine ... if I could get those replaced? I'd almost be willing to kill for that.
Sure, it'd take time to regrow a new tooth, but I could live with that.
So yeah, screw growing new organs - get me some new teeth!
Re:Start small? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think not.
You'd be putting the tooth fairy out of business.
Parent
Re:Start small? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Start small? (Score:4, Funny)
The tooth fairy would then receive a bailout package.
Parent
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That's okay. She's a bogeyman anyway.
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