Genetic Engineering New Teeth

The article I read was about some scientists that were able to grow teeth inside rats’ bodies. This project was led by Pamela C. Yelick, a scientist for Forsyth Institute, and the project was conducted in Massachusetts. Joseph P. Vacanti, a tissue engineer at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Yelick had the idea for the experiment.

Vacanti had previously worked with rats and he found that cells will naturally organize themselves into tissues and other complex structures if they are placed in the right environment. Vacanti and Yelick hypothesized that the same approach could be applied to growing teeth. Previous research had identified the stem cells that make dentin, but no one had been able to use the stem cells that make tooth enamel prior to this experiment.

The teeth were formed – inside the bellies of rats – using stem cells from pigs. Yelick obtained the cells from discarded pig jaws at a meat packing plant. The scientists removed a molar that had not yet erupted from the pig jaw to use for the project. They ground the molar into small pieces and treated it with enzymes to break it down into small patches of cells.

The cells were then placed into a scaffold and implanted into the rats. The scientists placed the scaffolds in the blood-rich tissue near the rats’ intestines. This area provided the nutrients that the cells needed to grow. The rats used in the experiment had weakened immune systems that would not reject the foreign tissue.

At that point, the researchers could only wait for the teeth to grow. As an added precaution, the rats were placed in a special clean room behind locked doors. The researchers would periodically x-ray the rats to see if anything had grown, but it was not until after several months that they actually found encouraging splotches inside the rats.

This article showed that we can use stem cells to create tooth enamel that we can use for new teeth and other dental needs in the future. Before this project, the idea of creating teeth using stem cells was only a thought. In class we talked about the creation of human organs inside of animals, cloning animals, and cloning humans, but we had not mentioned “cloning” teeth. Cloning humans brought up many ethical issues, but I do not think “cloning” teeth would pose any problems.

The information in this article seems biased. The Boston Globe is definitely not a scientific journal.