Humans May Be Able to Grow New Teeth Within Just 4 Years

11 hours ago (popularmechanics.com)

Popular Mechanics is like Popular Science right? Extremely bullish on new technologies to the degree of taking one study and turning it into a breathless article about how we're 1 year away from flying cars?

Sorry for the cynicism, but I grew up subscribing to Popular Science and I gained a very jaundiced view of this kind of science/technology popularizing

Unrelated to the growth topic, but related to teeth.

5 or something years ago I read here, on hn, about novamin/biomin and started to buy toothpaste with it.

Since that I had 0 cavities, even if my toothcare routine isn’t the best: most of the time I brush only in evening and when I had severe clinical depression episode I could go weeks without brushing.

  • Counter-anecdote, I did the same, got Burt's Bees with novamin when they still sold it (discontinued), then switched back to Crest. I prefer the Crest. No cavities either way, but tooth sensitivity and clean feeling differences. A tooth chip I wondered might remineralize, i.e. grow back or fill in or something, had no change.

    My guess is the SLS detergent, present in Crest and not in Burt's, is the more significant factor.

    • I always had sensitive teeth (and brush exclusively with sensodyn for many years) so I guess this is less of a factor for me.

      I buy Canadian? Sensodyne that has novamin in it.

  • Do you eat much sugar? Soda or juice? These things make a huge difference. So does age. Young people get cavities easier than somewhat older people.

    • Is there also not a some genetic aspect there? It is a question as I do not know but always assumed as I always did whatever and have 0 cavities or anything else that other people seem to have and I am almost 60. Never have receding gums, sensitivity, cavities or anything else since I was born.

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Confused a bit by the article: it mentions human trials began in september 2024, but also that the trials that might prove it working are yet to start?

  • I think it's just poorly written. If you go to the source[1] the trial period was planned from September 2024 to August 2025, and the submission says people are "undergoing" a trial. Perhaps it got delayed, or, more likely IMHO, the trial period is over and they're studying the data so haven't made reached a conclusion yet.

    [1]: https://www.kitano-hp.or.jp/info/20240503

  • It’s a phase 1 clinical trial designed only to assess safety and determine the appropriate dosage. Future trials will focus on efficacy.

This is like fusion energy. It's been 4 years away since I've been a child.

  • I personally regrew my teeth since I was a child. Granted, once.

    • Fun fact - all of your adult teeth were already there from the start, hiding under(inside?) the gums. We don't "grow" new teeth when the baby teeth fall out - the adult teeth were always there under them.

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Aren't the shape/size/placement/etc. of human teeth fairly unique across different individuals? At least unique enough to use dental records to identify bodies.

I don't see if mentioned in TFA, but if new human teeth can be grown is it expected that the new ones will just grow in "correctly" to fit a person's mouth?

  • > At least unique enough to use dental records to identify bodies.

    Yes but in comparative dental analysis they use ante-mortem dental records to compare with post-mortem remains. It's not like DNA where you can record it once and then use that to match samples decades later in a database. In order to have a high confidence in a match, recent x-rays and records of dental work like fillings, crowns, etc. work best.

    And no it is not expected. It's one of the primary challenges with bringing these kinds of drugs to market, as hyperdontia is already relatively common among humans (I had an incisor growing at the roof of my mouth an inch behind my row of teeth). Most successful applications of these tooth regrowth drugs tend to place them near the root of missing teeth hoping that the cellular growth signaling mechanisms are still working.

Old news. They were doing this with ultrasound successfully 20 years ago. I know a guy who a tooth back with his own device.

Scientists regrowing everything except hair. Fuck my life.

I've been taking vitamin k2 mk4 at 45mg a day for over a year now. My teeth feel gr8. Now I need to get some of this stuff to have super human chompers.

  • This guy's been downvoted badly but he's right - vitamin k2 make your teeth into "superteeth".

    I started K2 about 10 years ago. Next dental checkup (about a year too late) the dental tech said my teeth appeared recently-cleaned. This has continued since then. No cavities, little cleaning required other than regular brushing, flossing and taking k2.

    • IIRC plaque is mineralized by saliva in the same way as tooth enamel, so something that changes saliva in a way that prevents tartar from forming might be reducing the amount of calcium in your saliva in a way that could potentially ultimately not be good for your teeth.