I’ve seen many procedures and treatments for the human body, be it botox injections or chemical peels, and I take little notice of them, they’re not for me. However I was reading an article on Digg that was really interesting. I know that people end up losing their teeth in many ways, particularly a fight in high school could leave you spitting a tooth or two, but losing your teeth could be a thing of the past thanks to a new breakthrough at the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory.

Dr. Jeremy Mao, the Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dental Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, has managed to successfully create new teeth with the help of stem cells. This is pretty cool, as it means an end to dentures and artifical implants as the body can regenerate a tooth with stem cells to a scaffold. Standard dental implants take around six months to heal, and if they fail, it could take 18 months to replace to include healing time, grafting time and fitting a new implant. They are annoying and fiddly, plus you have to visit different clinicians to get it done. I had a friend who got an implant and the whole process was long, painful and just wasn’t worth it in the end.The use of stem cells are getting better, apparantly they can mend damaged heart tissue and other organs, is great as it could ease strain on donors as well as decreasing the delay of an operation while a suitable match is found. The fact that they can also alleviate the issues of teeth replacement is a bonus.