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Posted on 04/03/2004 6:24:33 PM PST by Piefloater
BABY teeth will be used to repair brains, mend hearts and grow new adult teeth under an ambitious medical project even its creators admit "sounds like science fiction".
Scientists at the Royal Adelaide Hospital's Hanson Institute are using discarded baby teeth to grow human tissue to replace damaged cells in various parts of the human body.
Stem cells – the base cells which grow into different body parts – taken from baby teeth are being influenced to grow into bone, cartilage, muscle and brain cells.
In the latest step, researchers have started injecting human stem cells taken from baby teeth into the brains of rats which have been induced to have a stroke.
The goal is to have the human cells either replace the damaged neural networks or stimulate other cells to take over the job.
If successful, baby teeth eventually could be used to treat humans with damage from stroke or afflictions such as Parkinson's disease.
Other applications include using the stem cells to grow teeth to replace damaged human teeth.
Dr Stan Gronthos, from the Hanson Institute, identified stem cells from the pulp in teeth while working with colleague Dr S. Shi in the US.
"The great thing about working with teeth is that baby teeth are routinely discarded, unlike trying to obtain cells from the liver or heart," he said.
"They usually go to the tooth fairy and that's the end of it, but we can use them.
"One stem cell can be grown in culture into a colony of thousands of cells, then into millions of cells.
"They can regenerate into connective tissue such as bone, cartilage, fat and muscle."
Dr Gronthos has submitted an article to the prestigious Lancet medical journal following the recent success of a project which put human tissue into rats to regenerate teeth.
"Stem cells from teeth can be influenced to grow into tissue other than teeth," Dr Gronthos said.
"We have some evidence that some cells may have the potential to develop into neural cells.
"We now have a project injecting human cells into the brains of rats in the hope they can replace networks damaged by stroke or degenerative neural diseases.
"It sounds like science fiction but it is more of a technical issue."
A trial with Professor Mark Bartold, of Adelaide University School of Dentistry, will implant stem cells in sheep to study teeth and jaw regeneration.
If successful, human trials will follow which could spell the end of dentures.
Discarded adult teeth such as extracted wisdom teeth also can be used to obtain stem cells which in turn can be grown into a variety of tissue.
"We can direct the stem cells about the way to go – one becomes a tooth, another grows into heart muscle, another becomes neural cells," Dr Gronthos said. "Regenerating teeth is important for quality of life because if someone cannot chew properly they can face real problems."
The Hanson Institute is the SA's largest medical research facility, employing around 300 scientists and 100 post-graduate students, and last year won $13 million in competitive research grants.
Institute director Professor Howard Morris said the institute's major focus was on cancer, bone and joint diseases, brain injury and disease, and clinical trials.
Dr Gronthos was awarded the institute's new investigator award last year for his work with stem cells as well as a National Health and Medical Research Council career development award.
Sounds like a pretty exciting development to me that should take any ethical/religious issues out of the stem cell research debate.
That is unless anyone has any concerns about using baby teeth for research instead of handing them over to the tooth fairy?
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