Growing new teeth from stem cells. 'An astonishing advance'.

[Joe Chi Minh]

From today's Mail on Sunday:

Damien walmesley, Professor of Restorative Dentistry at the University of Birmingham and Chairman of the British Dental Association:

An astonishing advance in dentistry is taking place at King's College London, where technolgy is being developed to help grow replacement teeth. This focuses on the use of stem cells to regenerate teeth.

So far, medicine enables us to regenerate so may parts of the body, but teeth are tricky so this is a remarkable development. Teeth are strong, dense and made of calcified tissues, and they are also quite complex structures. Implants, of course, already exist, but growing our own teeth would be even better.



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1238536/The-best-health--2010-A-round-incredible-breakthrough-new-year.html

[enid602]

1. hope

There´s hope for the British yet.

[Xipe Totec]

2. If only we could regrow some backbones... n/t

[valerief]

7. Ha! Yeah, and grow some political will!

:rofl:

[annabanana]

3. Now THAT'S some research I can get behind.

Sharks just keep replacing teeth as they lose them. Maybe we can find that "auto-generating" gene and get it to work for people..

Humans didn't used to outlive their teeth, back in caveman days. They didn't eat refined sugar, and their lifespan was shorter....

[DJ13]

4. Why is Grand Dad chewing on the furniture?

He's teething, it'll pass.

[tridim]

5. Stem cell therapy is going to change everything.

I can't help but consider it in context of HCR, because I think the non-GOP Congress understands the major advancements that are coming. The next 10 years are going to be amazing.

[HughMoran]

6. "I'll take two"

:evilgrin:

[inna]

8. How cool is that!

[Quantess]

9. Amazing!

[nickinSTL]

10. nice. be cool if my dad could get that done...

although I expect it'll be too late, or too expensive, by the time it's actually available.

Got to say, though, as much as losing your teeth is a pain...there are other things I'm more concerned about getting figured out than growing teeth...

Such as my mom's mitochondrial myopathy, which is killing her.

Or my PKU, which is only a mild inconvenience for me, largely due to recent improvements in treatment, but is a serious problem for many.

And, of course, there are MANY other things...

if this tooth-growing helps find ways to fix some of them, great...on its own, I'm less than ecstatic, though.

[yeswecanandwedid]

11. Awesome. nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

12. Here are more details on it:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/may/03/sciencenews.health