Scientists have now grown the rudimentary teeth from the most improbable of sources, the human urine.
Results show that urine can be used to be one stem cells source which in turn can be grown like tiny structures that are tooth-like.
The team which is from China is hoping this technique would be developed in a way so that it could replace lost teeth.
Some other researchers of stem cell caution that this goal does face a lot of challenges.
The researchers’ teams from all over the world tend to be looking for the ways to grow new teeth for replacing the ones lost due to age as well as poor hygiene of teeth.
Stem cells – master cells that could grow into all types of tissue – happen to be a famous research area.
Group at Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health made use of urine as starting point.
The cells that normally pass from body, like those from lining of body’s waterworks, then are harvested within laboratory. These cells which are collected then are coaxed to be formed into the stem cells.
Mix of such cells as well as other material taken from mouse was then implanted into animals.
According to researchers, after 3 weeks, the cells bundle started resembling a tooth. This structure that looks like tooth contained dentin, dental pulp, the enamel organ as well as enamel space.
However, such “teeth” weren’t hard like the natural ones.
This research piece isn’t all at once going to present new options to the dentist, though the researchers do say it can lead to some further studies that are towards eventual dream of the human teeth total regeneration for the clinical therapy.
A scientist of stem cell, Prof Chris Mason, at the University College London, says that urine is a poor point to start. He said, “It is probably one of the worst sources, there are very few cells in the first place and the efficiency of turning them into stem cells is very low. You just wouldn’t do it in this way.”
Also, he warned that contamination risk, like through bacteria, happened to be quite higher compared to other cell sources.
He also added that the huge challenge there was that the teeth tend to have pulp with blood vessels and nerve which had to be integrated in order for the teeth to be permanent.
