8 ms·
Researchers use light to coax stem cells to repair teeth (2014)
- mad_dev 10y agoThis is kinda old. But I was surprised to know that such an advancement in stem-cell research has been made.
- msie 10y agoSigh, I hope more comes of it. This is the first time I've ever heard of it.
- aaronbrethorst 10y ago(2014) Any updates on this since then?
- kyriakos 10y agoI hope this process becomes part of mainstream dental medicine. Our current dental technology feels backward compared to other fields of medicine
- manmal 10y agoSo true. In cases where teeth don't get out as easily as intended, they are sliced, hammered and broken out of your jaw - feels so medieval.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Noseshine 10y agoUhm... do you now how bones get repaired? Only the easiest fractures are allowed to heal themselves. Everything worse than that looks like this: https://teachengineeringprod.blob.core.windows.net/content/cub_/activities/cub_biomed/Images/cub_biomed_lesson10_activity1_image1web.jpg https://teachengineeringprod.blob.core.windows.net/content/c...
- pygy_ 10y agoOrthopedic surgery is indeed a lot like wood working. Surgeons use saws and drills routinely in the operating room. See also (for example): http://www.orsupply.com/medical/category/Surgical-Instruments/872/category/Surgical-Chisels/891 http://www.orsupply.com/medical/category/Surgical-Instrument...
- MichaelApproved 10y agoKnee replacement isn't much prettier. Here are some links to time stamped surgical highlights sawing bone [5:55 mark] - https://youtu.be/bGOspdD25Dw?t=355 https://youtu.be/bGOspdD25Dw?t=355 hammering [11:10 mark] - https://youtu.be/bGOspdD25Dw?t=671 https://youtu.be/bGOspdD25Dw?t=671 Swinging a hammer like a baseball bat to remove a pin [entire video] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnBvpSU1Fcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnBvpSU1Fcc Dentistry is gruesome but so is surgery, in general.
- agumonkey 10y agoMade a quick youtube search for latest surgery tech, all I saw was a sewing burning scissors. Cute tech but still barbaric to me. Artery is even more gruesome, plumber. I wish to see organ generation take off somehow.
- MichaelApproved 10y agoIf you're looking for some interesting surgery tech, check out this fairly simple concept for handling battlefield trauma situations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBauDwhGlzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBauDwhGlzg
- agumonkey 10y agoEnd part is tough to watch. It's cute tech, and for that context very useful. In civil surgery I want the organic equivalent of this.
- atomical 10y agoUpcoming tech is targeting the WNT pathway to rebuild cartilage.
- raverbashing 10y agoAnd this is why I work in IT even though I like power tools
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- decker 10y agoEver look at how an ACL gets repaired?
- raverbashing 10y agoLet me guess, (dead) donors?
- beisner 10y agoEither that, or they can take a slice of your own patellar tendon and just graft that on where your ACL used to be.
- adventured 10y agoThere are other options inbound rapidly. Osiris Therapeutics for example has something called Stravix, that they're targeting at tendon repair first. It'll be on the market in November - "Stravix is a cryopreserved human placental tissue designed to address surgical needs for soft tissue repair" "Stravix was developed as a pliable allograft cover with tensile strength that is ten times greater than amniotic membranes alone and designed to offer durability, elasticity, and conformability for surgical procedures. In addition, Stravix retains the properties inherent to the native fresh tissue as a result of Osiris’ proprietary cryopreservation process, BioSmart" They have a bunch of products in the regeneration space. Cartiform for cartilage repair. Menvivo for meniscus repair. etc
- ericd 10y agoJust went through the latter. Would have been so much nicer if there was a way to just regrow it. The attendant swelling in the knee causes the quad to shut down, and atrophy before you get to reactivating it, which precipitates a year-long process of physical therapy before you've got a full stable and strong leg again.
- Brakenshire 10y agoKind of backward, but also one of the most successful fields of medicine.
- andyjdavis 10y agoOut of curiosity, how do you define success Vs other fields of medicine? It seems like something almost impossible to compare.
- Brakenshire 10y agoI think, most problems can be prevented with effort, and if they still happen, most of them can be fixed with some sort of intervention. Don't think you could say that about many other areas.
- petra 10y agoThe ideal dental treatment would be a dental vaccine(against the mouth bacteria that destroys teeth and harms gums), letting future people not even being aware to dental issues(or maybe just use a monthly/weekly mouthwash). . there was even a startup aiming for that but it stopped due to fda and problems creating a trial. Hopefully someone like Google finishes that up.
- Kinnard 10y agoWhat was the name of the company?
- petra 10y agoOragenics. They are not the only effort. more info at on them and others at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine The science: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3708248/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3708248/
- amelius 10y agoThis one seems promising and already has a product on the market: http://www.curodont.com/en/ http://www.curodont.com/en/ Description of their technology: http://www.curodont.com/en/curolox-technology/ http://www.curodont.com/en/curolox-technology/
- Kinnard 10y agoThe technology looks beautiful, though I am unable to access the website. Thanks for sharing.
- angersock 10y agoEh? Dentistry is one of the few fields of medicine that seems to know exactly how to fix whatever is ailing you and can do so at a cost that can be reasonably borne out-of-pocket without the clowncar of the insurance industry showing up. I'd say that it's a huge success!
- maxerickson 10y agoI don't remember where, but I saw dentistry compared to carpentry and the metaphor really stuck. Take out the old thing, glue in a new thing, spackle, etc. Hell, dentists even occasionally use brute force to get things to line up better (<-that's an inapt description of braces).
- mickronome 10y agoThats only true if you have simple issues, I've had a molar silently split into 4 pieces (likely) because of a non-perfect filling (one of the only two I have/had). Apart from the non-fix of removing the tooth, there was a tremendous amount of 'umm's and 'maybe's from a competent dentist, and the attempt at root filling and gluing the tooth together ultimately failed. So now I'm stuck with a molar less, or filing down perfectly healthy teeth to make a bridge, or an implant which might not work because the bone was affected by the previous broken tooth - and molar implants can be problematic in any case - or so I've been told. Dentistry might not be a dark art anymore, but we appear to be much better at fixing broken bones than broken teeth.
- akiselev 10y ago》 Dentistry might not be a dark art anymore, but we appear to be much better at fixing broken bones than broken teeth. I don't think we are. I'd like to see a real study on this but I would think many more sugeries on bone end with complications that are life altering than dental surgeries, even despite their significantly more intrusive nature (although dental surgeries do always carry risk of nerve damage which can be debilitating). As a matter of scale, I bet there is a lot more patients for dental work than broken bones requiring surgery. Dentists also see many more patients since the work requires far less time, so I'd imagine these two factors meant they had much more data and practice to work with.
- roschdal 10y agoWhere can I sign up for participation in medical trials on this?
- taxicabjesus 10y agoYears ago I switched to brushing with baking soda and salt, and my teeth have basically stopped degenerating. Bar soap is good too, for removing acid-producing bacteria, but I don't like the aftertaste of some soaps.
- taxicabjesus 10y agoGerard Judd is the chemist who recommends brushing with bar soap [1]. It's cheap, readily available, and works better than anything else. And when combined with a second round of brushing with baking soda, my teeth stay squeaky-clean for longer than any toothpaste I've ever used. [1] http://www.fixyourteeth.org/ http://www.fixyourteeth.org/ Just yesterday my brother & his wife were commenting on how good my 8-year old dog's teeth are. They've never been professionally cleaned. When she was a puppy, we fed her raw chicken with bones. When she got to be full sized this was too expensive, so she now she eats dog food. I think the main reason she has such good teeth now is because she had adequate calcium and other nutrients when her teeth were forming.
- xyzzy_plugh 10y agoDoes your veterinarian not recommend having her teeth professionally cleaned? Humans who have perfectly healthy and well taken care of teeth still go to the dentist, and for dogs it is no different. You should still be getting her once a year! There are more issues than not which could be happening that are not visible to the untrained eye.
- taxicabjesus 10y agoShe got her puppy vaccinations, but didn't go to the vet for a very long time after that - it wasn't in my budget, and wasn't necessary. My dad needed a dog, so he takes care of her now, and I'm sure he'd have her teeth cleaned if the new vet had recommended it.
- Retric 10y agoDogs have a much shorter lifespan so tooth decay is normally only really a problem if they eat processed foods.
- PhantomGremlin 10y agoFirst the article says: "drill holes in their molars, treat the tooth pulp that contains adult dental stem cells with low-dose laser treatments, applied temporary caps" Then it says: "Dave and his team have added an innovative, noninvasive and remarkably simple but powerful tool" Yeah, okay, if you read Wiktionary it defines "noninvasive" as "not requiring an incision". So by that strict definition it's true. Drilling holes is totally different than "an incision". Right? I realize that this has "a host of applications", some of which truly are noninvasive. It's just that this particular application was anything but noninvasive, IMO.
- sah2ed 10y agoSeems you skimmed the article. The first part you quoted was explaining the prior art done by the lead author -- giving rodents (not humans) damaged tooth. The innovative procedure on humans will use lasers to trigger restoration of the damaged teeth.
- PhantomGremlin 10y agoSeems you skimmed the article. I did not skim the article. Show me where it clearly says that they have an "innovative procedure" that noninvasively triggers human dentin stem cells. They alluded to other noninvasive uses, but this wasn't one of them.
- habosa 10y agoI assumed the drilling was to simulate tooth decay and to remove something to be grown back as a trial, did I read it incorrectly?
- PhantomGremlin 10y agodid I read it incorrectly? The way I interpreted it, they drilled into teeth from the top in order to reach the "adult dental stem cells" (see item #3 here which is dentin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_tooth#/media/File:Cross_sections_of_teeth_intl.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_tooth#/media/File:Cross_...). The dentin stem cells are probably contained within the dentin? They wanted to stimulate the dentin stem cells with the laser light, but there is no way to reach dentin without drilling through the outer tooth enamel. They're not simulating tooth decay, they simply need to get to the dentin. Their conclusion was that this laser treatment "triggered the enhanced dentin formation".
- mrfusion 10y agoAny news on gum disease?
- zupreme 10y agoIf you like this, you should really read about another new technology which regrows dental tissue using sound: http://www.colgate.com/en/us/oc/oral-health/cosmetic-dentistry/adult-orthodontics/article/ada-07-novel-ultra-sound-system http://www.colgate.com/en/us/oc/oral-health/cosmetic-dentist...
- o_____________o 10y agoWe've "cured" cavities quite a few times via fighting the primary cavity causing bacteria S. Mutans with techniques ranging from phages, to a vaccine, to introducing a crippled version of the bacteria in a semi-sterilized mouth. Wondered what happened to all of those options?
- stephengillie 10y agoProbably gone to Cuba with the cure for lung cancer.
- rincebrain 10y ago[1] suggests that it's a combination of it being at least mildly hard, and there being insufficient fiscal incentive to develop it. It seems several vendors have realized solutions in varying stages of human trials, without getting to the "commercial" stage (yet): - "CaroRx" is entirely not mentioned on the owning company's products list [2] - The list of authors on the antibiotic study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences don't seem to have published any other studies on this since the 2013 one [3] - Oragenics seems to have just gotten a patent on a new form of their one-off replacement bacteria [4], but that's not nearly the same thing as human trial approval - The US military's gum for mitigating issues with dental neglect that happen in combat seems to currently be attempting to get licensed to non-military vendors for civilian use. [5] [6] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine [2] - www.planetbiotechnology.com/products.html [3] - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3708248/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3708248/ [4] - http://www.oragenics.com/news-media/press-releases/detail/35/oragenics-receives-new-patent-for-improved-replacement http://www.oragenics.com/news-media/press-releases/detail/35... [5] - http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/zero-dark-cavity http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/zero-dark-cavity [6] - http://techlinkcenter.org/summaries/antimicrobial-peptide-antiplaque-chewing-gum http://techlinkcenter.org/summaries/antimicrobial-peptide-an...
- myrloc 10y agoWhat kind of regulations does a treatment like this have coming it's way?