Will the Tooth Fairy Don a Lab Coat?

Pulp of baby teeth a reservoir of stem cells

MONDAY, April 21, 2003 (HealthDayNews) -- Forget what the tooth fairy leaves under the pillow. Scientists soon may put a hefty premium on those baby teeth.

Researchers in the United States and Australia have managed to coax stem cells from the pulp that clings to baby teeth that are shed. They were able to turn those stem cells into fat, brain cells, precursors of teeth and bone, and other body tissues.

Stem cells hold enormous promise in treating a wide range of diseases, from diabetes to Parkinson's. But religious conservatives object to the use of embryos as a source of the versatile cells, which can become virtually any tissue in the body. The Bush administration also has severely limited the amount of embryonic stem cells available to researchers.

Mature, or adult, cells can also give rise to stem cells, though some scientists have questioned whether these stem cells are as flexible as those derived from embryos.

In theory, people could bank their baby teeth when they fall out to build a store of genetically identical stem cells in the event of a future illness.

A few years ago, a team led by Songtao Shi, a dental researcher at the National Institutes of Health, isolated stem cells from the pulp of adult teeth. Since people would rather not part with their adult teeth, this discovery was of limited practical value.

So Shi's group turned their attention to deciduous teeth, the 20 chompers that appear in infancy and which make way for adult teeth by early adolescence. The researchers had parents gather jettisoned baby teeth and drop them into milk. Doing so preserves the living tissue for a day or so.

They then isolated stem cells from the pulp around the root of the teeth -- which they call "stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth," or SHED -- and used chemicals known as growth factors to stimulate their development into different types of tissue.

In another experiment, the researchers implanted neurons that grew from the stem cells into the brains of mice. Tests of the neurons indicated that they were functioning normally.

Shi says SHED grow faster and multiply more quickly than those from adult pulp. "This is the first work. We don't know if they have other capabilities, too," says Shi, whose young daughter provided some of the tooth tissue for the study.

Anthony Mahowald, a cell biologist at the University of Chicago, who edited the latest study, says baby teeth could be an excellent source of stem cells. Unlike umbilical cord blood, for example, the teeth are around until a child is about 12 years old. "It could be a much simpler way of getting adult stem cells that could have therapeutic potential," Mahowald says. "What's neat about it is that they're so accessible."

More information

To learn more about stem cells, try the National Academy of Sciences. For more on baby teeth, visit the American Dental Association.

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