This groundbreaking drug enters clinical trials in 2024 and is scheduled to be available to consumers by 2030.
A team of Japanese scientists has developed a groundbreaking drug that stimulates the growth of new teeth—the first of its kind in the world.
Dr. Katsu Takahashi, lead researcher, co-founder of Toregem Biopharma, and head of dentistry and oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan, has been working on how to induce the growth of new teeth his entire career.
“The idea of growing new teeth is every dentist’s dream. I’ve been working on this since I was a graduate student. I was confident I’d be able to make it happen,” he said in an article in The Mainichi.
The antibody-based drug targets a protein that inhibits the growth of new teeth from “tooth buds,” and in previous animal experiments, the drug induced the growth of a “third generation” of teeth, in addition to baby teeth and permanent adult teeth.
Sharks and many reptiles have teeth that are continually replaced, and crocodiles replace their teeth more than 40 times throughout their lifetimes, but mammals do not have the same unlimited tooth-replacing abilities. Until recently, it was assumed that humans had only two sets of teeth. However, there is now evidence that humans also possess these tooth buds, which have the potential to become a third set of teeth.
The drug has been used successfully to grow new teeth in mice and ferrets, with clinical trials expected to begin in humans in July 2024 to test the drug’s safety in healthy adults.
In 2018, Dr. Takahashi and his team gave the drug to ferrets, which, like humans, have tooth buds, baby teeth, and permanent adult teeth—and new teeth grew.
In similar experiments in 2018, the team gave the drug to mice, which also grew new teeth, and the findings were published in Science Advances in 2021.
The new drug could solve the problem of tooth agenesis, which is the failure of all or part of an organ to grow during fetal development. Tooth agenesis is the absence of one or more permanent teeth. Oligodontia is the absence of six or more teeth (not including third molars), and anodontia is the complete absence of teeth.
By Emma Suttie
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