Medicine, Psychology and Physiology
Root canals are always fun, right? In reality, word that you need a root canal is some of the worst news most people get at the dentist. Whenever your dentist tells you that's the next procedure you're going have to go through, two things are clear beyond the pain you're about to endure: One, that your throbbing will finally soon go away, and the second is that the tooth that's getting the root canal is dead.
However, researchers have come up with a new kind of biomaterial that not only encourages the natural regeneration of teeth, but also might eliminate root canal procedures for good.
So how do we get root canals in the first place?
It all starts with a cavity that needs to be filled with either porcelain, a tooth-colored filling material, gold or other metal alloys. But as soon as that filling fails, the pain returns. That usually means the nerve and vascularization of the tooth are infected and need to be removed. Their place is taken by a special compound that is then cemented into the tooth. All that is done via a root canal procedure. The tooth is saved, but it's no longer served by nerve or blood vessels. And over time, the tooth might be lost because of that.
Researchers from the University of Harvard and Nottingham have come up with a biomaterial for fillings that is regenerative, according to Popular Science. The material stimulates the growth of stem cells in the pulp, which could prevent further tooth decay. Because fillings wouldn't fail as often, root canal procedures could be virtually unnecessary.
The team took home the second prize in the materials category during the Royal Society of Chemistry's Emerging Technologies competition. That said, we likely still have quite a long wait until this new synthetic biomaterial becomes widely available.
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Popular Science
THE END OF ROOT CANALS?
STEM CELL-STIMULATING FILLINGS COULD CHANGE DENTISTRY AND SAVE YOUR TEETH
Image courtesy of Eric Schmuttenmaer (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Teeth X-ray
What if damaged teeth could heal themselves? That's the inspiration behind a new project from Harvard and the University of Nottingham to create stem cell stimulating fillings.
Dentists treat hundreds of millions of cavities each year by drilling out the decay and putting in a filling.
But 10 to 15 percent of those fillings fail, says Adam Celiz, a therapeutic biomaterials researcher from University of Nottingham. And that leads to millions of root canals to remove the tooth's pulp, the soft tissue in the center of the tooth that contains the blood vessels, nerves, and connective tissue. A root canal can weaken the tooth, which may eventually need to be pulled.
Celiz and his fellow researchers have developed a new kind of filling made from synthetic biomaterial that can stimulate the growth of stem cells in the pulp of the tooth. Just like regular fillings, the biomaterial is injected into the tooth and hardened with UV light.
In in vitro testing, the fillings stimulated the proliferation and differentiation of stem cells into dentin, the bony tissue that forms the bulk of the tooth under the white enamel. The researchers believes that if used in a damaged tooth, those stem cells can repair the kind of damage that often comes from the installation of a filling. In essence, the biomaterial filling would allow the tooth to heal itself.
In the future, Celiz says, all fillings could be made of such regenerative material so that damaged teeth could heal themselves, lowering the failure rate of fillings, and potentially even eliminating the need for most root canals.
The team took second prize in the materials category of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Emerging Technologies Competition this year.