A team of scientists led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup has been working on a drug to stimulate the growth of new teeth in what would be a world-first, aiming to put it on the market by around 2030.
Toregem Biopharma, funded by Kyoto University, is expected to begin clinical trials on healthy adults in around July 2024 to confirm the drug’s safety, after the team succeeded in growing new teeth in mice in 2018.
Most people have “tooth buds” that have the potential to become a new tooth, in addition to baby and permanent teeth, although the buds usually do not develop and subsequently disappear.
It wasn’t clear if this drug would promote new “buds” to develop and then grow, or if it relies on existing dormant buds to have an effect.
Yeah, or if it’s at all targeted, or affects the entire mouth. If they can get a missing tooth or two to regrow, that would help a lot of people. If you start getting teeth sprouting up everywhere that need to be surgically removed, that would be a lot less universally applicable.
Same for whether it only works once, or if it develops new buds. Gotta say, it would be nice to make it to grave with a full set of teeth, since people losing their teeth has a huge impact on their quality of life.
“I see you have a dead root up there. Please sit back and I will just pop all your teeth out, and then this stuff will regrow all of them in no time.”
EDIT: As bad as it sounds, I would go for it unironically. Not just because my mouth is a mess, but also because my teeth grew out quite jammed, and a factory reset may solve that.
The last time this photo was shared, the associated pages noted they had artificially induced agenesis, then used this drug to restart development. It’s why the drug’s first trials would be, as you suspected, on people where dormant buds did not progress.
From the image it looks like a drug to make you a vampire
The trial for kids without teeth looks interesting. The pathways for adult teeth (re)growth will probably require more than just one drug in humans.
Can you grow it on a different species then transplant it to a human?
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