These mini-piga just grow human teeth-what matters

When you lose a baby tooth, an adult grows in its place. But if you lose an adult tooth, your options are limited to dentures, titanium implants or a stylish hole for yawns. Soon, however, there may be a third option: teeth grown in laboratory.

Researchers at the University School of Dental Medicine Tufts have raised a combination of human and pork dental cells in the jaws of pigs, a method that one day can offer a viable medical solution to replace human teeth. As described in detail on December 27 exploration In the magazine Translational medicine of stem cellsBioengineated tissue is implanted in the test pigs, where they continue to grow a tooth -like material.

“The long-term survival of dental implants remains a concern for health based on their short-term projected survival of ~ 15 years, significant potential for the absorption of the jaw and the risk of peri-implantitis. The ability to create functional bio -engineered teeth made up of live tissues with properties similar to those of natural teeth would be a significant improvement to the currently used synthetic titanium implants, “the Tufts Weibo Zhang and Pamela Yelick tooth study. “In order to deal with this opportunity, our study focuses on creating biological substitutes for teeth.”

Gian and Jelik took cells from the enamel of pork teeth and cells from the tooth pulp of human teeth, among other human cells, and planted them on a scaffold–essentially a biodegradable tooth -shaped frame made from parts of pork teeth as described by Mit technological reviewS

“The resulting structures of bio -engineered dental buds were implanted in the mandibuls of adult Yucatan minipigs and are grown for 2 or 4 months,” Jelik and Gian explained. Researchers have chosen to work with mini pigs because of “similar sizes and anatomy of their mandibuli with human mandibuses.”

It must have been a devil of a toothile smile-a whopping regular pork teeth growing to bio-engineered people. After the cultivation period, the researchers were happy to observe “the formation of tissues similar to teeth”, including difficult layers, similar to dentin and cement.

“They are not yet beautifully shaped teeth,” Jelik told Mit Technology Review. “But we are optimistic that one day we will be able to create a functional biological replacement of the teeth that may enter people who need tooth replacement.”

As Jelik noted, additional studies must be conducted before this technique becomes a truly viable alternative. In the meantime, however, their work has joined many other studies testing bioengineering in the creation of tissue and organs to give patients better alternatives to temporary synthetic materials or an endless list of donor.