Uni dentists: Stem cells are the future

Researches from an American university believe that stem cells will be the future of modern dentistry.

Scientists from the Nova Southeastern University (NSU) are saying that dentistry in the future will depend less on drills but more on creating new teeth from stem cells.

Tampabay.com reported that at the University’s College of Dental Medicine the boffins have already begun laboratory work to cultivate and harvest these stem cells.

In 2009, the NSU interviewed dentists on a national scale and found that over half of them believed they would be using stem cells and “tissue engineering therapies” within the next 10 years. 

The survey also revealed that 96 percent of interviewed dentists considered the ability to re-grow and replace oral tissues to be the future of dental medicine.

The NSU believe it’s research is so vital as it aims to create replacement tissues and teeth for implantation into patients. This procedure is thought to be more favourable by dental professionals as having real teeth implanted will give patients a more normal dental life. 

To create the teeth scientists have to use polymer material to create scaffolds on which they grow the flat layers of stem cells into a 3-D tissue structure.

The scaffolds are used to lend support to the new tooth and control its size and shape. This procedure has already been successfully completed by researchers.