Curiosity
Teeth From Urine: Researchers Grow Tooth-like Structures from Human Urine
Teeth From Urine: Researchers Grow Tooth-like Structures from Human Urine
Researchers at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health in China have grown small tooth-like structures from human urine. Well, that is an obvious over simplification. The researchers grew the tooth-like structures from human master stem cells they retrieved from urine.
Duanqing Pei, a professor of stem cell biology at the research institute, took epithelial cells found in urine and converted them into teeth.
“We have a long-running interest in tooth formation,” Pei told ABC News. “We want to use somebody’s own cells to generate a tooth.” Pei added that if the cells came from somewhere else, they could be rejected by the host’s body.
If successful, the goal of the researchers would be medical breakthrough as it would allow for the regeneration of lost teeth.
The researchers face many obstacles from naysayers in the scientific community, but their initial findings were published in the Cell Regeneration Journal. Master stem cells retrieved from the urine originated from the lining of the body’s urine tract. However, a master stem cell can be used to build any part of the human body and the researchers used that fact to create the quasi-teeth. At this point, the findings will be another stepping stone in the evolution of stem cell engineering.
The goal would be to allow full regeneration of human teeth. A stem cell scientist from University College London, a public research facility, was critical of the research. He believes that using urine to harvest stem cells was the worst place to begin the research due to the risk of contaminating the stem cells and the poor quality and quantity of stem cells found in urine.
ON The Web:
New teeth grown from urine – study
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23492425
Scientists Make Teeth Using Urine
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/scientists-make-teeth-urine/story?id=19828340