Seems pretty dumb in our biological design to not be able to regenerate such a functional (and also easily breakable) part of our body.
Seems pretty dumb in our biological design to not be able to regenerate such a functional (and also easily breakable) part of our body.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think that’s how the drugs in development work. They cause the existing teeth to produce more enamel or something.
you are wrong. all their tests are on subjects missing teeth, not with reduced enamel. this is literally growing replacement teeth.
https://newatlas.com/medical/tooth-regrowing-human-trial/
I stand corrected. Thanks!
I was thinking of this:
https://dental.washington.edu/trials-begin-on-lozenge-that-rebuilds-tooth-enamel/
But your link is far more exciting.
Hopefully that’s what it ends up being, as the idea of growing new teeth has been around in science and media for a long time.
The latest work I’ve seen reactivates the genes to start growing any existing teeth that had stopped. It’s for early development problems in children, not for adults. But of course the media seized on the “regrow teeth” part and ran with it. Unless there’s a way to implant new teeth seeds and then get them going, adults are still out of luck.
Teeth cannot produce enamel. Enamel is not a living tissue and it was produced by cells outside of the tooth in a coral-like manner. In order to grow a new tooth, you need it to be fully surrounded by specialized living tissue for the whole growth cycle.
PS: I honestly expected something like this to come out of bioelectric computation research, but progress seems slower there. Or rather knowledge and techniques in other fields is reaching critical mass, giving us these advances.
Maybe “produce” isn’t the right word, but I was thinking of these lozenges that made headlines a few years ago.