Teeth are wonderful, aren't they? They're like stalagmites/stalactites for your mouth; they let you chew your food, a vital part of the digestion process, and give you a winning smile (assuming you're not British, of course). Losing them can just be terrible - just ask any senior citizen, child, or meth addict on your street. Indeed, you could almost say it bites.
Everything's cool, though, because science is on the case, and researchers are telling dentures to get bent-ures.
Science World Report
You want the tooth? You can't handle the tooth... without proper treatment, of course.
It seems like we see greater and greater potential in stem cell technology everyday. These replacement teeth could develop like the real thing, and while it'll take some time to actually get them in the mouth, I have high hopes we'll get there. It's a long ways off, sure, but the great thing about waiting for the future is, well, it's all a matter of time.
inb4 The Chews did this.
Everything's cool, though, because science is on the case, and researchers are telling dentures to get bent-ures.
Replacing missing teeth with new bioengineered teeth, grown from stem cells generated from a person's own gum cells, is a future method that could be superior to the currently used implant technology.
New research, published in the Journal of Dental Research and led by Professor Paul Sharpe, an expert in craniofacial development and stem cell biology at King's College London's Dental Institute, describes an important preliminary step towards the development of this method by sourcing the required cells from a patient's own gum.
Research towards producing bioengineered teeth, also called bioteeth, aims to grow new and natural teeth by employing stem cell technology which generates immature teeth (teeth primordia) that mimic those in the embryo. These can be transplanted as small cell pellets into the adult jaw to develop into functional teeth, given the right circumstances, programming and assembly -- all of that difficult to master and not even tested yet -- the researchers say.
You want the tooth? You can't handle the tooth... without proper treatment, of course.
It seems like we see greater and greater potential in stem cell technology everyday. These replacement teeth could develop like the real thing, and while it'll take some time to actually get them in the mouth, I have high hopes we'll get there. It's a long ways off, sure, but the great thing about waiting for the future is, well, it's all a matter of time.
inb4 The Chews did this.