Really? This sounds more like someone's plan to get grants to research stem cells than someone's plan to repair (or replace) teeth.
We already have a natural ability to grow new teeth that replace existing ones. Everybody does it... once. Where's the research into getting it to happen again?
Theet formation is a very early procces, even before the baby is born.
> Primary (baby) teeth start to form between the sixth and eighth week of prenatal development, and permanent teeth begin to form in the twentieth week.
There has been a ton of research in the area of re-growing teeth from stem cells. A cursory search-engining will turn up a ton of articles, some going back decades, and many giving the impression that it's close to happening. I've been following it for awhile because I knew I'd be in the market for a new tooth eventually.
There have been a lot of research around USAG-1, too [1]:
> Uterine sensitization-associated gene-1 (USAG-1) deficiency leads to enhanced bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling, leading to supernumerary teeth formation.
If that could be targeted at a given tooth site (i.e. I don't want to go thru another round of deciduous teeth across my entire mouth) that would be pretty cool. We're each carrying a perfect growth matrix for new teeth, after all.
If it just repeated the process everyone is already familiar with, in which each of your teeth falls out and grows back in one at a time over a period of several years, it would already be a perfect solution to tooth decay and demand would be massive.
Really? This sounds more like someone's plan to get grants to research stem cells than someone's plan to repair (or replace) teeth.
We already have a natural ability to grow new teeth that replace existing ones. Everybody does it... once. Where's the research into getting it to happen again?