SaedNews: Don't worry about your lost tooth anymore. Your long-awaited wish of regrowing a lost tooth will be realized with the injection of a drug in 2030.
According to SaedNews' Science and Technology Service, as reported by Hamshahri Online, while bones can regenerate, teeth are not so lucky, leading millions of people worldwide to suffer from toothlessness due to various reasons, including neglect or tooth fractures. These individuals have been searching for solutions to regrow their lost teeth, and it seems that such a possibility will be realized in the near future.
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.
Researchers are preparing to test the safety of their monoclonal antibody, TRG035, in people with congenital tooth agenesis, the same condition the mice had in the 2021 study. If proven safe, trials will follow to test its effectiveness. Tooth agenesis is a developmental anomaly that leads to the absence of one or more teeth. It is one of the most common dental abnormalities, ranging in severity from the loss of a single tooth to complete anodontia, in which all teeth are absent.
