Dental enamels have now been grown from culture cells.

Thanks to a research team from the Institute of Medical Science, the University of Tokyo (Japan) which reported a new technique for culturing cells capable of producing enamel.

This group has recently shown that epithelial cells extracted from the developing teeth of 6- month-old pigs continue to proliferate when they are cultured on top of a special feeder layer of cells (the feeder-layer cells are known as the 3T3-J2 cell line). This crucial step boosts the number of dental epithelial cells available for enamel production.

In the past, enamel-like and tooth-like tissues have been produced via tooth-tissue engineering, but the setback always was how to produce the enamel from cultures so that there'll be sufficient for human testing.

I guess that setback has been resolved; the next step will be to achieve the same success with their partners in tooth formation: the dental mesenchymal cells - which will further develop into production of tissue to replace damaged or missing enamel, and ultimately, regeneration of whole teeth.

The above findings have been presented by M. Honda et al. of the University of Tokyo, Japan at the recent 85th General Session of the International Association for Dental Research.

Read the full report for more details.