Business of Life

From tooth fairy to stem cell bank

In an earlier post, I wrote about baby teeth as a source of stem cells. Here's a report on baby teeth from the Australian Stem Cell Conference in October

"Parents will want to store the stem cells found in the pulp inside these juvenile teeth in liquid nitrogen" says Dr Stan Gronthos, a haematologist at the Hanson Institute in Adelaide, South Australia. "That way they could be used to grow new teeth and perhaps even cure neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease."

He predicts they will become effective for growing replacement brain tissue to overcome stroke damage as well as basal cell degradation linked with Parkinson's.