Scientists and researchers from King’s College London have managed to grow human teeth under laboratory conditions.
Although many animals are able to regenerate their teeth endlessly, human beings only get one set of adult teeth.
So the go-to solution for people who’ve lost their teeth or have damaged teeth is to either get braces to correct their teeth or opt for implants.
The new technology could provide an alternative solution.
The hope is that these “lab grown teeth would naturally regenerate, integrating into the jaw as real teeth”, said Xuechen Zhang, a final-year PhD student at the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral and Craniofacial Sciences.
“They would be stronger, longer-lasting, and free from rejection risks, offering a more durable and biologically compatible solution than fillings or implants.”
The King’s College team, along with Imperial College London, successfully introduced a special type of material that would enable cells to communicate with each other. This effectively means that one cell could tell another cell to start becoming a tooth cell, allowing scientists to recreate the process of tooth development in a lab.
The lab-grown teeth aren’t ready to be implanted into a human mouth yet.
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