Say Goodbye to Fake Teeth: Dentists Grow Real Teeth in Labs

We can regrow teeth instead of relying on implants which have a tendency to fail.


Why do dental implants get rejected? It probably has something to do with how they work. A dental implant is, at its most basic, just a screw implanted into a patient’s head. That screw replaces the root of the tooth, while a fake crown provides the part that you see.


Thankfully, we may not have to worry about those side-effects much longer. Not because they are going away, but because they won’t be necessary. In the future, we won’t implant fake teeth–we’ll just grow new ones.


In the future, we won't implant fake teeth; we'll just grow new ones.


This cause for celebration comes from Jeremy Mao of Colombia University. Although there had previously been many talks about projects that help regenerate nerves, or cells of any kind, but this is new.


This time, the miracle medical procedure actually grows a new body part from scratch. Yeah, that body part may be a tooth, but it’s okay to start small.


Due to these new developments, all of the issues brought on by dental implants may disappear in the near future.



The process takes stem cells from the patient’s body and creates a type of scaffolding where the tooth is grown. The whole process takes about nine weeks.


Contrast that with how getting an implant works. Some people have to have every vestige of their former tooth removed via surgery. Then, anywhere from six weeks to six months or more later, they get the ‘screw’ put in. Compared to that kind of time frame, nine weeks isn’t so long to wait.


Especially considering that what you get is a real tooth, made from your own stem cells.


Dentists observed successful results when the tooth was tested, which is a green light for this method to replace implants in the future.