A discovery made by scientists at King's College London and Imperial College London brings closer the possibility of growing human teeth in a lab, which could potentially make it unnecessary to use fillings, crowns, and implants.
The scientists invented a new type of substance that enables tooth cells to talk to each other and form in a manner resembling the growth of a natural tooth inside the body.
As scientists say, the existing methods of tooth restoration, like fillings and implants, are good but have certain flaws. For example, the fillings may get weaker with time and be eventually replaced, and implants require surgery and cannot regenerate themselves.
This recently designed material is expected to imitate the environment in which young tooth grows. This material slowly emits factors that would stimulate various types of dental cells to coordinate their activity and build new dental tissues.
This technique is said to differ from previous ones in the way that it does not force cells to develop simultaneously, but lets them do it on their own. The scientists think that this will help people to grow much healthier teeth in the future.
While this research is just at the beginning of its way, some promising results have been achieved through laboratory experiments. The scientists are now going to investigate how to place such cells into dental cavities and make them form dental tissues.
Experts have suggested that, with further research, the innovation could be useful for patients to heal their broken teeth rather than getting filled with the conventional method.
It is believed that dentists could even use a similar technique in the future to grow replacement teeth from the patient's cells so that no risk of rejection occurs in the procedure.
The researchers made it clear that the lab-grown teeth have not been made available for the patients as yet. More lab experiments and clinical tests need to be performed before the technology could be adopted in the field of dentistry.
However, with successful future research in this field, this innovation is likely to revolutionize the field of dentistry by allowing millions of patients to receive effective and natural treatment against damaged teeth.
The scientists claim that their aim was to create treatments that can help the body heal its injuries naturally without the use of artificial elements to repair broken teeth.