Scientists discovered an ionized mineral gel that stimulates rapid growth of new tooth enamel in 2019, so why are we still filling cavities with metal and plastic?
Have a cavity? Instead of filling it with metal or plastic, soon you could just grow your tooth back thanks to a new discovery.
Scientists have created a gel that stimulates the growth of new tooth enamel.
A substance chemists have never been able to recreate, tooth enamel is the hardest tissue in the human body.
We grow enamel in our youth, but once it is mature, it has little ability to regenerate or repair itself… until now.
Chinese scientists have developed a gel made of calcium phosphate ion clusters that triggers the growth of a thin new layer of enamel in just 48 hours.
They’ve published their findings in the journal Science Advances.
The gel “can be used to induce the epitaxial crystal growth of enamel apatite, which mimics the biomineralisation crystalline-amorphous frontier of hard tissue development in nature,” lead author of the study Zhaoming Liu writes.
When painted on donated decayed human teeth, the gel created a new layer of enamel 3 micrometers thick.
While that’s nearly 400 times thinner than the natural enamel layer of our teeth, the researchers think repeated applications could fully repair even the deepest of cavities.
“We hope to realise tooth enamel regrowth without using fillings which contain totally different materials and we hope, if all goes smoothly, to start trials in people within one to two years,” Liu told Sky News.