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Researchers investigate possibility of regrowing teeth

Embryonic tooth germs are generated from dental pulp cells in a laboratory using a special method of cultivation. (Photograph: TU Berlin/Tobias Rosenberg)
Dental Tribune International

Dental Tribune International

Thu. 29. August 2019

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BERLIN, Germany: For certain animals, the loss of teeth does not always pose a problem: sharks and crocodiles have the ability to regrow their teeth repeatedly. Researchers from the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) are exploring the possibility that this can be applied to humans and are working on a new method to develop teeth from the human body’s own tissue.

“It’s true that there are isolated reports of people growing third teeth or even a third complete set of teeth, but why this should be possible for some people and not for others remains unknown,” said Prof. Roland Lauster, Head of the Institute of Biotechnology at TU Berlin.

“Essentially science assumes that over the course of a lifetime the human jaw also possesses the information necessary for the growth of new teeth,” said Dr Jennifer Rosowski, research assistant to Lauster. The question is what exactly triggers this process.

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Under natural conditions, hair, teeth and even nails grow as a result of what is termed mesenchymal condensation. In the case of teeth, certain precursor cells cluster together in the jaw beneath the outer skin layer. These cells condense and form a kind of embryonic tooth germ. As a result of this condensation, the embryonic tooth germ begins to interact with surrounding cell layers in the jaw via specific messengers. “Within the tooth bud created by this process, a differentiation of various cell types occurs: the enamel organ, the dental papilla, and the dental lamina. These tissues continue to differentiate until a complete tooth is formed,” said Rosowski.

The approach adopted by the research team for the natural growth of third teeth is as simple as it is ingenious. They remove dental pulp cells from the interior of an extracted tooth, and these are then cultivated and dedifferentiated in such a way as to produce an active embryonic tooth germ. If this embryonic tooth germ were to be implanted into a patient, it would begin to communicate with the surrounding tissue, initiating the process of tooth development.

Competing research groups have already provided conceptual evidence in an animal model system and have demonstrated that an embryonic tooth implanted into the jaw actually develops into a complete tooth.

The TU Berlin research team, however, sees a decisive competitive advantage to their method. All other competing research groups use embryonic stem cells to produce embryonic tooth germs. “This makes a real application of the process impossible as the use of stem cells is ethically highly contentious and not permitted by law in most countries,” explained Rosowski. “We would only use cell material taken from the patient’s own teeth. This enables us to bypass all ethical and legal considerations, providing us with the decisive advantage that our procedures focus on an actual application of the body’s own tissue. Using the body’s own tissue means that no rejection reaction will occur.”

The Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin provides the researchers with the teeth they require for their research in the form of extracted third molars. The researchers have developed a special cultivation method to allow the adult cells in these teeth to dedifferentiate back into a type of embryonic state and finally form an embryonic tooth germ. The dental pulp cells are isolated, cleansed and then cultivated in microtitre plates whose upper surfaces have been coated with a hydrogel. The hydrogel prevents the cells adhering to the walls of the plates. They float freely in the medium but are actually programmed to achieve a 3-D structure. As a result, they condense independently, without external pressure, into a kind of cell ball. This process takes 24 hours and the resulting ball is about 200–500 μm in size.

“We are the only group worldwide who have been able to demonstrate that this process of creating a ball through independent mesenchymal condensation triggers the expression of various genes, thus setting in motion the production of specific messengers. These messengers are required to interact with the surrounding jaw tissue,” said Rosowski about the method, which has since been patented globally. In order to prove the validity of this, the researchers co-cultivated the embryonic tooth germs together with gingival cells. During embryonic tooth development, these two cell types interacted, initiating tooth formation. Thus, the researchers were able to prove precisely this interaction.

Now that all the in vitro tests have been successfully completed, the embryonic tooth germs are ready for the first preclinical tests.

3 thoughts on “Researchers investigate possibility of regrowing teeth

  1. diana says:

    Dear brothers and sisters, we cán regrow our teeth but ( also our liver) do not keep this from the people please! I want to try this. I know it,s all about money but, we all have the right to truth. Please let me be the human with regrown teeth…I will travel to germany for this beautiful fact, greetings from the netherlands

  2. Theresia says:

    Yes, it will soon be ! The scientists at TU Berlin are doing pre clinical tests at the moment. Fingers crossed

  3. Freddie D. Chambers says:

    Is the new tooth regrowth therapy available anywhere in the world.
    Freddie Chambers

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