Researchers say humans have a third set of teeth available as rudiments, ready to grow as needed.
What makes sharks such intriguing animals is their ability to regrow teeth. And while a group of Japanese scientists don’t say we should try to be as much like sharks as possible, they want that ability to be developed in humans.
After a 2021 study published in the journal Scientific Reports showed how therapy targeting a protein synthesized by the USAG-1 gene could affect the number of teeth grown in animals, researchers turned to explore the same possibilities in humans. They have announced a clinical trial starting in 2024, which they hope to make generally available in 2030.
Instead of dental implants, teeth in the mouth can already regrow by the middle of this century – we even have a third set of tooth buds whose growth is genetically inhibited. Photo: Click4teeth
“The idea of growing new teeth is every dentist’s dream. I’ve been working on it since my master’s degree. I was confident I could make it happen,” Katsu Takahashi, principal investigator and head of the Department of Dentistry and Surgery, told Popular Mechanics magazine oral of Kitano Hospital, Osaka Medical Research Institute. “We hope to see a time when tooth regeneration drugs will be the third choice after dentures and implants.”
For years, Takahashi has studied the potential of tooth regrowth and has focused on the role of genes in tooth growth. “The number of teeth varied only because of a single genetic mutation,” he said. “If we take this as the goal of our research, it should be possible to change the number of teeth,” he explains the principles of how this therapy could be used to grow teeth.
The researchers found that the USAG-1 protein can limit tooth growth in mice, so that the absence of the protein can induce tooth growth. Researchers developed a drug to block the protein and allowed mice to grow new teeth in animal experiments.
An article published in the journal Regenerative Therapy in 2023 criticizes the lack of available treatments to regrow teeth, but highlights how treatment with anti-USAG-1 antibodies in mice could provide a “breakthrough in the treatment of dental abnormalities in humans” .
Since about 1% of people suffer from anodontia, a genetic condition that prevents the growth of a full set of teeth, there is hope that human teeth will regrow beyond experiments conducted on mice.
Clinical trials have begun. The researchers themselves hope that the activation of the third series of dental buds has an important future. In addition to anodontia – the absence of teeth – there is also the phenomenon of hyperdontia, in which people develop more than one set of permanent teeth. These people also make up about 1% of the population.
2024-01-07 12:34:00
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