Dental Enamel Grown From Cultured Cells

A Japanese team say's they've used cultured cells to grow new tooth enamel.

The breakthrough should boost efforts to produce tissue that can replace damaged or missing enamel, and possibly, even regenerate whole teeth, the researchers say.

Tooth enamel is unable to regenerate because it's formed by a layer of cells that are lost by the time the tooth appears in the mouth. That means that wear, damage and decay take a toll on enamel over the years.

A team at the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Tokyo created a new technique of culturing cells with the capacity to produce enamel.

They found that epithelial cells taken from the developing teeth of six-month-old pigs continued to proliferate when the cells were cultured on top of special "feeder" layers of cells.

The scientists placed the dental epithelial cells, along with cells from the middle of the tooth (dental mesenchymal cells) on miniature collagen sponge scaffolds. The scaffolds were then placed in the abdominal cavities of rats, which provided a favorable environment for the dental cells to interact and develop.