Ever see those LED brushes on late-night TV that say they’ll grow your hair back? -Well, it turns out they work; -or at least the theory anyway.
Results were spotty, and the principles weren’t well-understood; -until now.
Using low-powered lasers, some creative dentistry & great analysis, a Harvard team has figured out how to regenerate the bony-core of teeth in 12 weeks, using only light.
(not as impressive as growing a whole new tooth, but anyway)…
-Seeya dentures and implants!
The cool part of it, is that they didn’t even have to take stem-cells out from some other part of the body & then re-introduce them. They got the ones Right-Adjacent to the area to work on the fix instead!
-Bye-bye, excessive lab bills!
What they found by observing things a little more directly were 2 things:
1) There are a bunch of factors in tissues of the body, like local stem-cells in teeth, growth factors like the one they found, and chemical compounds the laser creates.
2) There is a specific cascade-of-events that happens From Laser, to oxygen-compounds, to growth-factor using oxygen compounds, and then an interaction “telling” the stem-cells to change & go make more tooth-core material.
And what used to be unclear that they now know:
1) What power of laser to use
2) How the laser jump-starts things
3) And the other types of bio-ingredients they need to make the regeneration happen.
And since lasers are in a lot of offices, now a lot more doctors have better information on which operations encourage things to grow and which do the opposite, like with laser hair-removal.
Not only that, but since there are likely to be biochemical agents similar to what the teeth had all around the body, the process that David Mooney’s team discovered could turn into regeneration at all kinds of different sites on an injured person.
The world of bio-regeneration just got a LOT bigger!
Check out the details at the Links:
Photo Credits: Publicity photo of Mike Myers as Dr. Evil, from the movie: “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”, by Mike Myers, Jay Roach & New Line Cinema
Links:
• Source: Harvard/Wyss-Researchers use light to coax stem cells to repair teeth
• via: Gizmag
• Source Study: ScienceMag-Photoactivation of Endogenous Latent Transforming Growth Factor–β1 Directs Dental Stem Cell Differentiation for Regeneration
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