Researchers Grown A New Teeth Using Human And Pig Dental Cells

Growing new teeth is a trend among private companies and scientific groups today. Recently, Tufts University released an update regarding its recent development in that field. This research team used their unique approach, combining pig and human cells to grow new bioengineered teeth in the lab and implant them directly in the jaw. This method is in the trial stage, like a few similar modern "teeth-growing" initiatives. Still, it's pretty interesting to explore.

How does it work?

In a study published at the end of last year, a research group led by Tufts School of Dental Medicine professors Pamela Yelick and Weibo Zhang reported significant progress in their regenerative experiment.

In their work, scientists focused on pigs' biological feature that allows them to grow multiple sets of new teeth over time during their lives, due to special cells in the jaws that their organisms use to form new teeth. Thus, scientists visited a slaughterhouse, obtained several mini-pig jaws, and extracted all the required biological material. Human dental mesenchymal cells were obtained from extracted wisdom teeth and other healthy teeth that were removed for orthodontic reasons.

After cell cultivation, scientists create a mixture of pig and human cells, and then place the "cocktail" in a scaffold made from pig tooth fragments. After a few weeks in the lab, scientists place these cell clusters inside the mini-pig jaw to let them grow further.

Is it effective?

Two months later, the research team removed the implanted teeth. They observed significant progress in the cell structures, which had formed hard layers of cementum and dentin, making them very tooth-like.

Currently, researchers are planning to conduct a longer experiment to gain a better understanding of the process and signaling molecule implementation, which could help to grow a new tooth directly inside the jaw without the implantation process.

The key goal of that work is to create a new tooth using only human cells, and we are currently far from reaching that destination. Still, despite the scale of the experiment's breakthrough, there is a lot of work to do before we can apply such an approach to humans.

This research is only one of the few recent discoveries that are aimed at finding how to grow new biological teeth so we can avoid the implantation procedure. Take a look at other developments in that field on our Newsfeed:

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