When you lose a baby tooth, an adult one grows in its place. But if you lose an adult tooth, your options are limited to dentures, titanium implants, or a stylish gaping hole. Soon, however, there might be a third option: lab-grown teeth.
Researchers at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine have grown a mix of human and pig tooth cells in pig jaws, a method that could one day offer a viable medical solution for human tooth replacement. As detailed in a December 27 study in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine, the bioengineered tissue was implanted in the mandibles of test pigs, where they continued to grow tooth-like material.
“The long-term survival of dental implants remains a health concern, based on their short-term predicted survival of ~15 years, significant potential for jawbone resorption, and risk of peri-implantitis. The ability to create functional bioengineered teeth, composed of living tissues with properties similar to those of natural teeth, would be a significant improvement over currently used synthetic titanium implants,” the Tufts dental researchers Weibo Zhang and Pamela Yelick wrote in the study. “To address this possibility, our research has focused on creating biological tooth substitutes.”
Zhang and Yelick took cells from the enamel of pig teeth and cells from the dental pulp of human teeth, among other human cells, and planted them onto a scaffold—essentially a biodegradable tooth-shaped frame made from parts of pig teeth, as described by MIT Technology Review.
“The resulting bioengineered tooth bud constructs were implanted in the mandibles of adult Yucatan minipigs and grown for 2 or 4 months,” Yelick and Zhang explained. The researchers chose to work with mini pigs because of their mandibles’ “similar size and anatomy to human mandibles.”
That must have been one heck of a toothy smile—imagine regular pig teeth growing next to bioengineered human-ish ones. After the growing period, the researchers were happy to observe “the formation of tooth-like tissues,” including tough layers similar to dentin and cementum.
“They’re not beautifully formed teeth yet,” Yelick told MIT Technology review. “But 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.”
As Yelick noted, further research needs to be conducted before this technique can become a truly viable alternative. In the meantime, however, their work joins a host of other studies testing the limits of bioengineering in creating tissue and organs to give patients better alternatives to temporary synthetic materials or an endless donor waitlist.
