Humans Could Grow Entirely New Teeth in Just a Few Years, Scientists Say
A team of researchers figured out the ideal hydrogel to grow teeth from stem cells in vitro.
In the future, entire teeth could be grown in that hydrogel and implanted, or tooth cells could get their start in the hydrogel and continue growing inside the mouth.
Sitting in a dentist's waiting room is a dread that can only be numbed by Novocaine. No one wants a drill in their mouth, after all. But what if you never needed a root canal again, and could instead just grow entirely new teeth?
Humans don't have the advantage of regenerating teeth like elephants or sharks. Until now, we've only had one chance to grow replacement teeth, and that passed us by at the age when most of us believed in the tooth fairy. After that, it's fillings and crowns all the way down.
The problem with fillings is that they don't last forever and can weaken tooth structure, which causes sensitivity and (possibly) further decay. Artificial dental implants may look like teeth, but they can't restore tooth function and can lead to further complications. But there may finally be a solution which may minimize your visits to that ominous chair.
While growing teeth in a lab has been attempted before, there was something missing. Now, a team of researchers led by Xuechen Zhang from the Faculty of Dentistry at King's College, London, has finally figured out the ideal environment for teeth to grow on their own in vitro. When teeth grow, the environment they grow in allows stem cells to communicate, sending signals that cause those stem cells differentiate into tooth cells. Previous experiments had not yet come up with an environment close enough to actual gums, which led to signals being sent all at once and disrupting the process.
Zhang's team used hydrogels to develop a material, or matrix, close enough to the environment in the body for cells to send signals to each other in the right order and allow tooth organoids to grow.
'The development of tooth organoids involves the self-organization of cells into structures that mimic the cellular composition and functional attributes of the actual teeth,' he said in an study recently published in ACS Macro Letters. 'When these structures are transplanted in vivo, they can then fully develop into mature teeth.'
Either pluripotent or tissue-resident stem cells can be used as tooth starters. Pluripotent stem cells can self-renew, and are versatile enough to differentiate into most tissues in the body. Tissue-resident stem cells, on the other hand, are tissue-specific progenitor cells that exist in all tissues and are used either for development or for replacement in case of injury. The cells used by Zhang came from mouse embryos, but he had used human cells in previous experiments, and plans to use them again in future research. Embryonic stem cells from two groups of mice were combined to create cell pellets that were then cultured to grow teeth.
Several different hydrogels were tried, and how successfully the teeth grew from these stem cells depended on the properties of the different hydrogels. The developing teeth with the most structure and definition grew in a matrix that had the lowest stiffness and highest swelling, and were the only ones that actually grew into organoids. These fully developed organoids had both an epithelium (outer enamel layer) and mesenchyme (tooth pulp).
'To regenerate teeth through tissue engineering, epithelial and mesenchymal cells must interact within a [matrix] that facilitates these interactions, resulting in tooth organoids that can fully develop into teeth in vivo,' Zhang and his team said in the study.
Growing an entire new tooth—or starting the process so that the cells can continue it when implanted—will require biomaterials like this recently developed hydrogel. Human teeth really could someday be grown in a lab, and one day, it may even be possible to inject stem cells into the gums and grow an entire new tooth right in your mouth.
If you can avoid getting cavities for at least a few more years, you might never have to hear the sound of that drill again.
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