The world's first human trial of a drug that can regenerate teeth will begin in a few months, less than a year on from news of its success in animals. This paves the way for the medicine to be commercially available as early as 2030.
It’s more about the extremely early stages of things. It will be years before it gets to the point it’s being used on people that have lost teeth. Right now, it’s for people only with congenital lack of teeth.
I’m not saying the drug isn’t going there eventually, it likely will. But it’s not going to be even tested for other uses for something like two more years (iirc, I’m pulling this from memory over the last year or so that the drug has been reported on) from now, and even that assumes the current testing is successful.
It’s an incredibly promising thing that will help a lot of people if it’s safe and effective, not just the current targeted population.
I’m actually hyped for this to work out. My working life was partially with geriatric patients. The quality of life loss that goes along with tooth loss is horrible. Then there’s the loss of bone density in the jaw after losing the teeth.
My peeve is with the reporting putting the cart before the horse. Bad medical reporting causes problems even more than bad science reporting in general. Report what is, especially in headlines, then cover what might be as a secondary note. Right now, regrowing teeth is not proven capability of the drug for humans. The testing for growing teeth where they’ve never been hasn’t even finished yet.
It’s more about the extremely early stages of things. It will be years before it gets to the point it’s being used on people that have lost teeth. Right now, it’s for people only with congenital lack of teeth.
I’m not saying the drug isn’t going there eventually, it likely will. But it’s not going to be even tested for other uses for something like two more years (iirc, I’m pulling this from memory over the last year or so that the drug has been reported on) from now, and even that assumes the current testing is successful.
It’s an incredibly promising thing that will help a lot of people if it’s safe and effective, not just the current targeted population.
I’m actually hyped for this to work out. My working life was partially with geriatric patients. The quality of life loss that goes along with tooth loss is horrible. Then there’s the loss of bone density in the jaw after losing the teeth.
My peeve is with the reporting putting the cart before the horse. Bad medical reporting causes problems even more than bad science reporting in general. Report what is, especially in headlines, then cover what might be as a secondary note. Right now, regrowing teeth is not proven capability of the drug for humans. The testing for growing teeth where they’ve never been hasn’t even finished yet.
The reality of what it is right now isn’t as catchy as what it could be.
So media tends towards the latter. More clicks that way.