“Latest Stem Cells News”

Don’t worry about your child’s loss of teeth or if they have immature ones as doctors at AIIMS can regrow them using stem cell technique by just making a minute slit in their root.
“We at AIIMS are treating children with infected, immature teeth as a result of traumatic injuries, by using locally available indigenous stem cells,” Dr Naseem Shah, Chief of the Centre for Dental Education and Research, AIIMS said.

She explained that the root forms the most important part of the tooth. It anchors the tooth within the bone and houses the pulp (tiny blood vessels and nerves) which extends to the underlying bone and helps to nourish and give feeling to the tooth.
Any trauma to the teeth may lead to infection and death of the pulp, infection in the bone and arrest of the root development. Such roots are very fragile and may fracture, ultimately leading to loss of tooth.

“You can make liver. You can make pancreas. You can make bone. Therefore you can make neuro cells. You can make heart cells,” said Dr. Robert Carpenter
Yes, he said make a liver make a heart. From what? Stem cells from your teeth.

“We recently discovered that adult stem cells that don’t have the controversy related to it like embryonic cells have the ability to regenerate and treat a number of illnesses and injuries,” Carpenter said.
Stem cells are being studied to affect other disease like diabetes, kidney problems; liver problems even Parkinson’s disease. It’s in human clinical trials, and it is expected to be available within the next decade. Stem cells from teeth are proving much better than those from even bone marrow.

“With dental stem cells, since they are closely linked to bone and cartilage. It is easy to manipulate these immature cells into cartilage. They’ve actually in the laboratory, have made an exact human ACL,” said Carpenter.Baby teeth have the most viable cells.

“Stem cells in teeth particularly deciduous teeth or wisdom teeth and the follicles the surround wisdom teeth are very immature very plastic stem cells, plastic being the key word that are manipulable into a number of different tissue types,” the doctor said.
Wisdom teeth are also a great source of stem cells and that is why Abby DelGiacco is sending wisdom teeth to a lab to have them preserved with a program called Stemsave. Once her teeth are extracted, they are placed in a container, sealed in a temperature-controlled thermos and overnighted to a cryolab where her cells are preserved if she needs them.

“You never really know what is going to happen and never want to think about it but something you could awful disease and that is what this is for it is not only for degenerative neurological diseases. It is for tissue, bone muscle, tendons if I tear my ACL,” said DelGiacco.
Insurance doesn’t pay to store your stem cells there is a $590 set up laboratory fee and each year thereafter Abby will pay $100.

The cells are there if and when she needs them and studies are showing they maintain viability at least fifty years, probably more. And if you don’t have wisdom teeth left, don’t worry. All you need is one healthy tooth.

Instead of children hiding teeth under their pillows, today in the United States consideration is being given to a method in which milk teeth are extracted before they fall out to remove the dental pulp, rich in adult stem cells, which is then frozen in liquid nitrogen in stem cell banks for future use.

Dental pulp from milk teeth in children, which are lost between the ages of 6 and 12, and from normal teeth in adults, are rich in stem cells able to transform into various types of tissues. Thanks to various studies performed by several scientists, it has been demonstrated that these cells have the ability to generate new nerves, bone, and teeth after being transplanted into the gums of various animals.

The National Dental Pulp Laboratori, Inc. (a laboratory of the New England Cryogenic Center) which has stored cells and tissues for 25 years, and for the past 12 years umbilical cord stem cells (in the New England Cord Blood Bank), this year will start to store Dental Pulp Stem Cells (DPSCs), allowing people to store dental pulp from their children’s teeth in liquid nitrogen. In the United States there are already 2 banks offering this service, and it has been predicted that next year it will be a service advised directly by dentists.

Adult stem cells could be used in an innovative technique to reproduce bone in patients lacking bone in the jaw. The new method was developed to rebuild the dental arch with an outpatient procedure under local anesthesia for people who are not able to undergo certain types of dental procedures. The procedure, developed by the University of Freiburg (Germany) has been performed in Italy by Luigi Montesani, a surgeon at Tufts University in Boston. “The insertion of implants and procedures for bone augmentation,” explained Montesani, “are a priority when rehabilitating patients who have lost their teeth.”

An adequate quantity of bone, is fundamental in order to successfully insert implants, while often, losing teeth results in bone loss that makes it impossible to give patients integrated bone implants. For this reason, a new technique was developed at the University of Freiburg, which uses mesenchymal stem cells, which are removed in an outpatient procedure from the posterior iliac crest using a needle, while the patient is under local anesthesia.

After collecting and concentrating them in a special matrix, they are inserted into the defective bone during the same session “In about 4 months,” continued Montesani, “they produce the quantity of bone necessary to correct the defect and the implants can then be normally inserted, while the prosthesis, or the new teeth, are implanted after another 4 months.” According to a study on 150 operations performed using this technique at the University of Freiburg, Mainz, and Groningen (Holland), it was determined that the quantity of bone obtained is the same as in procedures, which take pieces of bone from another part of the patient’s body, usually the jaw, hip, or cranium in a much more traumatic operation.

Some Steamboat Springs residents are forgoing the Tooth Fairy, hoping their teeth wind up being worth much more than a quarter.
Steamboat Springs oral surgeon Dr. John Lupori offers patients the chance to store the stem cells in the teeth he extracts. Lupori partners with StemSave, a New York-based company that freezes and stores stem cells found in the pulp at the base of teeth. Science is moving fast, those involved said, and the cells might someday save the patient’s life.

“Potentially, they’re incredibly miraculous,” said Dr. Bob Pensack, who had his daughter, Miriam, save her cells. “They’ve already been miraculous in the lab.”
Stem cells exist throughout the body and differentiate into organs and tissue. Stem cells that could be used to grow new organs, for example, are the type that haven’t differentiated. Dental stem cells fall into this category, StemSave CEO Art Greco said.

A team of researchers lead by Dr Thimios Mitsiadis at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has identified a gene responsible for the formation of enamel, which is the key component of the teeth. The experiments were accomplished in mice carrying a deletion of the transcription factor Tbx1, a gene that plays a principal role in several human malformations (heart, thymus, parathyroid, face, and teeth) associated to the DiGeorge syndrome.

“Subjects afflicted by DiGeorge syndrome exhibit teeth with enamel defects. We have demonstrated that a direct link between impaired Tbx1 function and enamel defects exists. Enamel forms via the mineralization of specific enamel proteins that are secreted by dental epithelial cells called ameloblasts. Our results clearly show that teeth of Tbx1 null mice lacked enamel and ameloblasts,” explains Prof Mitsiadis.