The world’s first human trial of a drug that can regenerate teeth will begin in a few months, less than a year on from news of its success in animals. This paves the way for the medicine to be commercially available as early as 2030.
The trial, which will take place at Kyoto University Hospital from September to August 2025, will treat 30 males aged 30-64 who are missing at least one molar. The intravenous treatment will be tested for its efficacy on human dentition, after it successfully grew new teeth in ferret and mouse models with no significant side effects.
“We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,” said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi, head of dentistry and oral surgery at Kitano Hospital. “While there has been no treatment to date providing a permanent cure, we feel that people’s expectations for tooth growth are high.”
Following this 11-month first stage, the researchers will then trial the drug on patients aged 2-7 who are missing at least four teeth due to congenital tooth deficiency, which is estimated to affect 1% of people. The team is recruiting for this Phase IIa trial now.
Insurance will probably call this cosmetic and not cover it.
Something like this seems cheap and longterm enough to be included in an insurance. Maybe not immediately, but soon enough.
God damn - every single post about something good is just filled with sad sacks that have to find something negative to focus on.
Nice of you to just disregard the real suffering that a shitty healthcare and insurance system creates.
Sigh.
Well unfortunately we are all products of our environments, where every single beneficial discovery inevitably becomes a commercial endeavour and priced out of reach of the societies that could benefit most from them. You are entitled to be the cheerleader for the discoverers to your hearts content, just as we are allowed to see and react to the after effects of it
You should expect every post to have a variety of opinions. Some positive, some negative. Not everybody is going to react to posts the same way you do.
The vast majority of replies in this thread, and to nearly every positive post - are sadsackery.
Differing opinions is fine. Raw, pointless pessimism as a monoculture is…not what you’re describing.
Vast majority, eh? How do you define vast majority? The vast majority of comments in this thread are positive. You’ve decided to focus on the negative comment.
Raw pointless pessimism? Way to totally ignore the VALID point I brought up in my comment. Insurance (including dental insurance), is bananas in America.
You’re accusing me of ignoring your point, but the starting point is that you’re ignoring mine.
Uh, you replied to my comment buddy.
Do you disagree with what they actually said though?
Maybe everyone focuses on the negatives because we just did 5 straight years where it seems like if given the choice between two outcomes positive and negative, we’re living in the timeline where the negative thing always happens.
My point is that some bizarre monoculture has developed where people seem to be pathologically unable to accept that something good happened for a change, and to focus on the good thing. Virtually every comment finds some way to find some ultra-pessimistic take. The very best possible take is nearly always something like “wtf took them so long” or “OK, now do X”.
It should be okay - occasionally - to be happy that something good happened. We have the 98% of other posts out there to moan about and focus on the negative stuff.
It was bad on Reddit, but it seems even worse here.
It’s exhausting.
You make a valid point and I wish you’d stop being downvoted for it.
For those that might be downvoting their comment, just a reminder: downvotes are supposed to reflect the quality of a comment not your disagreement. A bad comment for example is something like “lol get rekt”
That being said…
I’m genuinely curious if there’s a place online where you find the discourse to be in anyway slanted toward the optimistic? I’d love to hang out there and after the Reddit exodus, for a while I personally genuinely tried to only have positive discourse here but I think the mood of the zeitgeist is exactly that: when the world seems shitty, everyone’s opinions seem shitty.
Can’t wait for it to be $700 a dose.
Me too! That’d be amazing! Forget a root canal. Let’s yank it and start over.
I had my wisdom teeth removed because I failed to take care of them (dumb teenager), but my dentist told me my jaw fit them just fine, so I never had to lose them.
I want them back.
No smart teeth for dumb people 😜
I’m not dumb nowwww though. I want them back.
Dentist didn’t even let me keep them. I was gonna cast them in resin and make bone dice out of my mistake. Unfortunately, human teeth aren’t big enough to make dice without some extra material.
I lost a lot of teeth due to poor education, bad genes, and well water. I want them all back.
I had the exact same experience.
I wonder how weird it is to have teeth in the empty flesh spots left there now.
I bet it won’t be weird at all, honestly.
Growing pains, obviously, that’d be weird, but once they’re in, you’d get used to them as easily as you got used to having them removed.
At least, I had mine for a number of years before they were removed. It seems surprising, but I’m used to not having them, and I think the inverse will be equally weird.
I had a new tooth start sprouting on the inside of my mouth a while back. The new nerve in it was horribly sensitive, and I thought I had a cracked or damaged tooth before the dentist told me what was going on. I would rather have a nerve-less implant than a new-growing tooth like that again, given the choice.
Edit: It was a random new growth along the outside of my gums in my 20s.
Between this and the tooth decay “vaccine” (that replaces acid producing bacteria in the mouth with an alcohol producing kind) there’s no reason my kids shouldn’t reach old age without a full set of their teeth.
Aside from that whole, climate-change-driven-collapse-of-social -order thing.I better avoid it through. I had four of my otherwise healthy adult teeth removed early on to avoid crowding issues. No idea where they’d fit in my head now if they grew back
So now instead of getting plaque, I’ll just get tipsy on my saliva? And no one told me?
Stop eating candy! You will get drunk!
flying chancla
This sounds like great news!
Tooth growth putting! Absolutely no way that could cause horrors!
Like that one scene from The Algebraist by Iain M Banks.
My nose teeth could come in handy. So would anus teeth. I never had anus teeth, but I’ve plugged many a toilet. Imagine that never happening again to anyone! Just add 3 or 4 molars there and away we go!
I just pictured anus teeth chomping at the shit to break it up as you take a crap, and for that, fuck you.
But functional, you gotta admit 🤪! Or should I say butt?
as exciting as this is here in the US at least insurance prices are not affordable and neither is basic health care
this sounds like something Biden, Trump, and their donors will benefit from though
