Say Goodbye To Implants And Fillings? Scientists Grow Human Teeth In Lab For First Time

LONDON, April 15: In a feat that could revolutionise dental care worldwide, scientists at King's College in London have successfully grown human teeth in a lab for the first time, according to a report in BBC. The breakthrough could help patients who have lost their teeth by offering an alternative to fillings or dental implants.

The team of researchers at King's College, in collaboration with Imperial College London, managed to develop a material that mimics the environment needed for tooth development. Effectively, one cell can tell another to start transforming into a tooth cell under laboratory conditions.

While many species can regenerate their teeth, humans only get one shot at it. Current replacement solutions, including removable and fixed dentures and dental implants, are invasive and often fail to fully restore natural tooth form and function.

"This method leverages cells, biomaterials, and growth factors to engineer tooth structures that mimic the features and functions of natural teeth," the study highlighted.

"The goal of regenerative dentistry is to bioengineer an entire tooth, which requires replicating the interactions between the dental epithelium and mesenchyme."

Tooth loss is a prevalent health issue affecting millions of individuals worldwide, caused by different factors. Beyond impairing chewing and speaking, tooth loss also causes aesthetic and psychological issues.

"This idea of replacing the tooth in a biological way by regrowing it, drew me to London and to King's. By growing a tooth in a dish, we are really filling in the gaps of knowledge," said Dr Ana Angelova-Volponi, associated with the study.

Xuechen Zhang, a final year PhD student at the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral and Craniofacial Sciences said the lab-grown teeth would naturally regenerate and integrate into the jaw as real teeth. The new teeth would be stronger, long-lasting and free from rejection risk, "offering a more durable and biologically compatible solution than fillings or implants".

While scientists have created the environment required to grow teeth, the next challenge is to figure out a way to place them into a patient's mouth from the lab.

"We have different ideas to put the teeth inside the mouth. We could transplant the young tooth cells at the location of the missing tooth and let them grow inside mouth," said Mr Zhang.

Whatever the process scientists choose, it could still take years. However, the breakthrough may kickstarted a new era in dental care.

Scientists Discover New Way To Defeat Invisible Cancer Cells

SYDNEY, Mar 18: Australian researchers have identified a surprising mechanism focusing on telomeres -- protective caps at the ends of chromosomes -- that can help cells defend against cancer.

Telomeres are known to play a key role in ageing and cancer prevention.

However, with age, these structures naturally shorten, signaling ageing cells to stop dividing -- a crucial safeguard against cancer, according to the study by Sydney-based Children's Medical Research Institute (CMRI) on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.

"Our data shows telomeres are much more active. They can acutely respond to stress and actively open up to turn on a cellular response that looks like ageing. They do this to avoid cancer," said Tony Cesare of the Genome Integrity Unit at CMRI.

Cesare and his team worked with their collaborators at the University of Kyoto to understand the "active" role that telomeres can play in avoiding cancer.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, revealed that telomeres do more than just passively shorten with age. They actively respond to stress by triggering cellular ageing processes to prevent cancer from developing.

"Most people think of telomeres as a passive entity that shortens with cell division. This is a passive fail-safe used during ageing," Cesare said.

By inducing cell cycle arrest or programmed cell death, telomeres help eliminate cells with chromosomal damage before they can divide uncontrollably, he said, adding this discovery introduces a previously unknown anti-cancer function of telomeres.

Beyond its significance for telomere biology, Cesare suggests that this breakthrough could open new avenues for cancer treatment -- targeting telomeres to trigger cell death in cancerous cells may offer a promising therapeutic strategy.

As per the latest estimates, in 2022, there were an estimated 20 million new cancer cases and 9.7 million deaths.

About 1 in 5 people develop cancer in their lifetime, approximately 1 in 9 men and 1 in 12 women die from the disease, according to data from the World Health Organization.

450 Million Adults In India May Be Overweight Or Obese By 2050: Lancet Data Reveals

LONDON, Mar 6: Obesity is an alarmingly increasing public health issue in India and around the world. A recent Lancet data has revealed that about 450 million adults in India are expected to be overweight or obese in 2050.

Weight gain varies widely across the globe. In 2021, more than half of the world's adults with overweight or obesity were living in just eight countries including India with 180 million people and the rest were China (402 million), USA (172 million), Brazil (88 million), Russia (71 million), Mexico (58 million), Indonesia (52 million) and Egypt (41 million).

The data from the Lancet study suggest that these numbers are likely to rapidly accelerate in the coming years.

The shift towards a predominance of obesity (as opposed to just being overweight) is anticipated to be particularly significant in various Oceanic nations (such as the Cook Islands, Nauru, and Tonga), where obesity rates are projected to reach 60-70% by the year 2050.

This trend is also expected to impact densely populated nations like Nigeria (18.1 million), India (26.4 million), Brazil (17.8 million), China (35.2 million), and the USA (22.1 million), where the incidence of obesity among young individuals is predicted to rise dramatically.

The Lancet data revealed that without urgent policy reform and action, over half the world's adult population (3.8 billion) and a third of all children and adolescents (746 million) are forecast to be living overweight or obese by 2050. This can significantly increase the risk of premature disease and death at local, national and global levels.

India is one of the nations that are expected to have the largest number of overweight and obese adults by 2050 with 450 million people. Therefore, there's an urgent to address obesity as a public health crisis with a multifaceted approach. Both individual as well as societal efforts are imperative to combat obesity.

"Asians, especially Indians are prone to obesity due to their thrifty genes. These thrifty genes increase the body's efficiency in storing food as fat, making it easier to gain weight. Thrifty genes also increase the risk of metabolic diseases like diabetes," said Dr. Pradeep Chowbey, Chairman - Max Institute of Laparoscopic, Endoscopic, Bariatric Surgery & Allied Surgical Specialities.

"Other than genes, many other factors increase the risk of obesity in Indians including low levels of physical activity, lesser intake of nutritious food, more dependency on fast foods and others," he added.

Urbanization, increased consumption of high-calorie foods, and a decline in physical activity are notable contributors.

Obesity is a common risk factor for several diseases. The expert highlights that "diabetes, fatty liver, heart disease and even cancer are a few outcomes of obesity."