Business of Life

Save those baby teeth

Maybe you should be keeping them in the freezer.

Baby teeth revealed as source of stem cells

The tooth fairy could soon face competition for baby teeth from scientists who have discovered the teeth are a source of stem cells. The cells could help repair damaged teeth and perhaps even treat neural injuries or degenerative diseases.

Currently, researchers can isolate two types of stem cells. Embryonic stem cells can develop into any cell in the body, but their harvesting requires the destruction of embryos, which pro-life groups oppose. Adult stem cells avoid this problem, but have more limited abilities. Now it appears that the stem cells from children's lost teeth could provide an intermediate and easily accessible source.

"These stem cells seem to grow faster and have more potential to differentiate into other cell types than adult stem cells," says Songtao Shi, a pediatric dentist at the US National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Shi and his colleagues found the baby teeth cells can differentiate into tooth-forming cells called ondontoblasts, and also neural cells and fat cells.