this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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Humans may be able to grow new teeth within just 6 years. Japanese researchers are advancing a promising tooth-regrowing medicine into human trials. (www.popularmechanics.com)
submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Well, that's not actually the first thing they're testing:

Now, scientists will see just how similar, because humans will soon undergo a similar trial in September of this year. Lasting 11 months, this study will focus on 30 males between the ages of 30 and 64—each missing at least one tooth. The drug will be administered intravenously to prove its effectiveness and safety, and luckily, no side effects have been reported in previous animal studies.

I'm guessing the idea is to catch teeth that could have developed but never did (hey, I'm missing one that way). Otherwise I'm not sure how they'd control which type and how many show up.

Annoyingly there's no English language link, so it's hard to say. I'm not even clear on what they did with the ferrets.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Annoyingly there’s no English language link, so it’s hard to say. I’m not even clear on what they did with the ferrets.

Here you go! https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1798

A ferret got an extra tooth

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Ah, thanks!

So the meat of this is actually the mouse models, looks like. Strains of mice with genetically missing teeth got them back.

They basically just juiced normal ferrets to see what would happen, and they grew an extra incisor as you can see in the images posted. I'm guessing developing genetically toothless ferrets wasn't in the scope of their funding. You can get all kinds of weird lab mice "off the shelf", though.