Oral health is an important aspect in the life of every human being, however, sometimes hygiene does not always prevent teeth from falling out, because issues such as genetics also have an impact and this is how research was born to find a solution to this problematic.
The principal investigator and director of the Department of Dentistry and Oral Surgery of the Kitano Hospital, belonging to the Institute of Medical Research, located in the city of Osaka, Japan, Katsu Takahashi announced that they seek to achieve the growth of missing teeth.
The expert revealed that one of the great goals in the field of dentistry is to be able to make teeth grow and assured that since he was a student he began the tireless task of making it a reality.
“The idea of growing new teeth is every dentist’s dream. I’ve been working on this since I was a graduate student.
I was sure that I would be able to make it happen,” he revealed to The Mainchi.
He also revealed the causes that can cause the growth of teeth, since everything is about a genetic mutation; They discovered this after carrying out various investigations with rodents that had too many.
“The number of teeth varied through the mutation of a single gene. If we make that the goal of our research, there should be a way to change the number of teeth (people have).”
Investigations towards treatment begin.
That is why in 2005 they dedicated themselves to carrying out studies that verified a gene present in some mice that had a greater number of teeth and this led to revealing the presence of the USAG-1 gene, that is, a synthesized protein.
Thus it was that the development of a medicine was born in order to act as an antibody that blocked said protein in specimens that presented a low number of teeth and finally in the year 2021 the results were successful, since they did present a greater number of pieces. .
They hope to start testing for humans in 2024 with the aim of having it ready in 2030 and the idea is that it is aimed at children between 2 and 6 years of age with anodontia; this would seek to help them improve their quality of life.
What is anodontia?
It is a congenital malady that only affects 1 percent of the population and leads to abnormal tooth growth, since not enough pieces come out for the bite to function properly.
For this reason, it is important that said medication becomes a reality, since those affected have complications to achieve basic activities such as being able to speak, chew or eat.