Shock to the Medical Community; With this Injection, You Can Grow Teeth Again!

If the trials are successful, researchers hope that the injectable tooth growth drug will be available for all types of toothlessness by around 2030.

The details of this trial are as follows: Japanese researchers are transitioning animal experiments with a promising drug for regrowing teeth into human trials. The first patients received the injection intravenously in September of this year. Katsuo Takahashi, head of dentistry at the Medical Research Institute at the Kitano Hospital in Osaka, said: "We want to do something to help those who suffer from toothlessness."

In 2007, researchers discovered that mice with the USAG-1 gene had extra teeth. However, the protein of this gene plays a role in the growth of many organs in the body, so removing it to stimulate tooth growth was not a viable option.

Instead, researchers began testing various monoclonal antibodies (laboratory-designed proteins to bind to specific molecules) on mice with conditions that caused them to be born with fewer than usual teeth. The USAG-1 gene antibody can help stimulate tooth growth, and since then, scientists have been working on developing a "neutralizing antibody drug" that could block USAG-1. In 2021, they reported the discovery of such an antibody and noted that this antibody also stimulated tooth growth in guinea pigs, which, according to Takahashi, have similar dental patterns to humans.