When your teeth suffer trauma or infection, this can damage the internal tissue, the so-called dental pulp . Although it is protected by a thin layer of dentin – a substance slightly softer than enamel – it is often not enough and dentists have to fill or, in the worst cases, extract the affected tooth . Now, a discovery made by a team of scientists at King’s College London could prevent these unpleasant interventions. Or, at least, make them less frequent. The study has been published in the journal Scientific Reports .
It would simply be about stimulating the ability of the tooth itself to regenerate itself with its stem cells, which already act to repair small defects in the dentin, turning into odontoblasts , the specialized pulp cells of human teeth.
Interestingly, one of the substances used by British experts to stimulate the activity of these stem cells is based on Tideglusib, already used in clinical trials to find treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders . The experiment showed that when a biodegradable collagen sponge impregnated with the compound was inserted into the perforated teeth of mice, they spontaneously rebuilt .
” Fillings work, but you are replacing living tissue with dead cement . It is better if the teeth are repaired on their own; this restores their vitality,” said Paul Sharpe, director of the research team at King’s College, to the British newspaper The Guardian . “Our goal is to find a simple, fast and cheap solution to a problem suffered by millions of people.”
