Latest news with #Yelick
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How you could regrow your own teeth instead of having dentures
Teeth grown in a lab could soon end the need for implants and dentures, experts believe. Cells from wisdom teeth, combined with pig teeth cells, can be cultivated in a lab and implanted to fill a gap left by a lost tooth, a study has shown. These lab-grown teeth could be used to replace any type of tooth within 20 years, according to Prof Pamela Yelick, a professor of orthodontics at Tufts University in Boston. 'I 100 per cent think regenerating human teeth can happen,' Prof Yelick told reporters at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual conference. 'I believe we can do this in my lifetime and I'm in my mid-60s. 'There are so many advances happening in technology, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and dentistry, and they all feed off each other.' In a recent study by Prof Yelick, published in the Stem Cells Translational Medicine journal, human-like teeth were grown in pigs in less than four months. The experiments implanted small human-pig hybrid teeth into the jaw of a porcine study participant, where they completed their growth. 'The study presented here validates a potentially clinically relevant bioengineered tooth replacement therapy for eventual use in humans,' the authors write in the paper. Half of Britons are missing at least 10 teeth by the age of 75, according to official data, and one in 10 adults have fillings, crowns or bridges that cause discomfort. Prof Yelick said lab-grown teeth would feel more natural than implants because they keep the nerves and blood circulation. She said: 'We use cells from wisdom teeth that need to be extracted, and then expand them in the lab to tens of millions of cells. 'Then we can put them onto biodegradable scaffolds and get them to form tooth tissue. 'Even after taking the cells out, freezing them, thawing them and putting them back together they still remember what to do and how to form little tiny teeth.' The lab begins their growing process before the teeth then continue to grow into their full shape and size in the recipient's gum. Prof Yelick has now founded a company to turn her scientific breakthroughs into a commercial reality. Regendodent, the Boston-based company, has already developed one product, RegendoGEL, which is a naturally grown tooth pulp that can be implanted in a root canal. Because it has not been cleared by the FDA, it is not yet commercially available in the United States. This product is designed to make root canals last longer than their current lifespan because the standard cement that goes into the hollowed-out root is replaced with a natural tooth pulp. That pulp is a combination of nerves and blood vessels that promotes continued root development. Prof Yelick added: 'We're hoping we could make tooth roots that you could put a crown on that would fit properly with your bite. 'It might be resistant to caries or periodontitis so they could be therapeutic in addition to being functional. We're really thinking big.'
Telegraph
17-02-2025
- Health
- Telegraph
How you could regrow your own teeth instead of having dentures
Teeth grown in a lab could soon end the need for implants and dentures, experts believe. Cells from wisdom teeth, combined with pig teeth cells, can be cultivated in a lab and implanted to fill a gap left by a lost tooth, a study has shown. These lab-grown teeth could be used to replace any type of tooth within 20 years, according to Prof Pamela Yelick, a professor of orthodontics at Tufts University in Boston. 'I 100 per cent think regenerating human teeth can happen,' Prof Yelick told reporters at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual conference. 'I believe we can do this in my lifetime and I'm in my mid-60s. 'There are so many advances happening in technology, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and dentistry, and they all feed off each other.' In a recent study by Prof Yelick, published in the Stem Cells Translational Medicine journal, human-like teeth were grown in pigs in less than four months. The experiments implanted small human-pig hybrid teeth into the jaw of a porcine study participant, where they completed their growth. 'The study presented here validates a potentially clinically relevant bioengineered tooth replacement therapy for eventual use in humans,' the authors write in the paper. Half of Britons are missing at least 10 teeth by the age of 75, according to official data, and one in 10 adults have fillings, crowns or bridges that cause discomfort. Prof Yelick said lab-grown teeth would feel more natural than implants because they keep the nerves and blood circulation. She said: 'We use cells from wisdom teeth that need to be extracted, and then expand them in the lab to tens of millions of cells. 'Then we can put them onto biodegradable scaffolds and get them to form tooth tissue. 'Even after taking the cells out, freezing them, thawing them and putting them back together they still remember what to do and how to form little tiny teeth.' The lab begins their growing process before the teeth then continue to grow into their full shape and size in the recipient's gum. Prof Yelick has now founded a company to turn her scientific breakthroughs into a commercial reality. Regendodent, the Boston-based company, has already developed one product, RegendoGEL, which is a naturally grown tooth pulp that can be implanted in a root canal. Because it has not been cleared by the FDA, it is not yet commercially available in the United States. This product is designed to make root canals last longer than their current lifespan because the standard cement that goes into the hollowed-out root is replaced with a natural tooth pulp. That pulp is a combination of nerves and blood vessels that promotes continued root development. Prof Yelick added: 'We're hoping we could make tooth roots that you could put a crown on that would fit properly with your bite. 'It might be resistant to caries or periodontitis so they could be therapeutic in addition to being functional. We're really thinking big.'
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Grow Living "Replacement Teeth" for Dental Implants
Like something out of "Repo! The Genetic Opera," scientists have managed to grow human-like teeth in a lab — and implant them inside a miniature pig's mouth, in a harbinger of weird new frontiers for dentistry. As the MIT Technology Review explains, researchers at Tufts bioengineered this fascinating monstrosity using a mix of bovine and human tooth cells that were grown inside bits of pig teeth. The idea behind this terrifying lab-made concoction, which was detailed in a December paper published in the journal Stem Cells Transitional Medicine, is to create replacement teeth for human patients. Lead investigator Pamela Yelick — who runs an eponymous tissue bioengineering lab at Tufts — and her postdoctoral fellow Weibo Zhang have for years been looking for ways to create dental implants that fit peoples' mouths perfectly. "It's very difficult to replace an implant, because first you have to rebuild all the bone that has been absorbed over time that's gone away," the bioengineering expert told Tech Review. "We're working on trying to create functional replacement teeth." Throughout her lengthy quest to grow better chompers, Yelick has used cells from pig jaws because the farm animals grow many sets of teeth throughout their lifetimes. To this end, the scientist has long salvaged pig jaws from slaughterhouses and gotten the cells from there — making this entire project all the more gruesome, if thrifty. During a particularly sinister-sounding prior iteration of the experiment, the professor grew pig-human hybrid teeth on biodegradable scaffolds that were then implanted into the abdomens of rats because, as Tech Review notes, the rodents' jaws were too small for the array of teeth. "It doesn't bother the rats," Yelick told the magazine. While that freaky experiment clearly paved the way for this latest development, the researchers said that they didn't get to the human-like structure discovered in the latest iteration until they built scaffolds from bits of bovine teeth and implanted the semi-finished product inside the jaws of mini-pigs. After two months, the lab-grown teeth were subsequently removed — sorry to those pigs — and Yelick was impressed upon discovering that they were very "toothlike." The new structures had even begun growing hard layers of dentin and cementum, which occurs in adult human teeth. An obvious perfectionist, Yelick admitted that she and Zhang have not yet created "beautifully formed teeth yet" — but that's just spurring her to keep going. 'We're optimistic that one day we will be able to create a functional biological tooth substitute that can get into people who need tooth replacement," the scientist told Tech Review. More on teeth: Scientists About to Test Medicine to Grow New Teeth
