Sep 17, 2018 05:52 PM
Regrowing dental tissue with stem cells from baby teeth
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/regrowi...baby-teeth
EXCERPT: Sometimes kids trip and fall, and their teeth take the hit. Nearly half of children suffer some injury to a tooth during childhood. When that trauma affects an immature permanent tooth, it can hinder blood supply and root development, resulting in what is essentially a “dead” tooth. Until now, the standard of care has entailed a procedure called apexification that encourages further root development, but it does not replace the lost tissue from the injury and, even in a best-case scenario, causes root development to proceed abnormally.
New results of a clinical trial, jointly led by Songtao Shi of the University of Pennsylvania and Yan Jin, Kun Xuan, and Bei Li of the Fourth Military Medicine University in Xi’an, China, suggest that there is a more promising path for children with these types of injuries: using stem cells extracted from the patient’s baby teeth. The work was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. “This treatment gives patients sensation back in their teeth. If you give them a warm or cold stimulation, they can feel it; they have living teeth again,” says Shi, professor and chair in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology in Penn’s School of Dental Medicine. “So far we have follow-up data for two, two and a half, even three years, and have shown it’s a safe and effective therapy.”
Songtao Shi
Shi has been working for a decade to test the possibilities of dental stem cells after discovering them in his daughter’s baby tooth. He and colleagues have learned more about how these dental stem cells, officially called human deciduous pulp stem cells (hDPSC), work, and how they could be safely employed to regrow dental tissue, known as pulp....
MORE: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/regrowi...baby-teeth
A wearable device for regrowing hair
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/press...-hair.html
RELEASE: Although some people embrace the saying “bald is beautiful,” for others, alopecia, or excessive hair loss, can cause stress and anxiety. Some studies have shown that stimulating the skin with lasers can help regrow hair, but the equipment is often large, consumes lots of energy and is difficult to use in daily life. Now, researchers have developed a flexible, wearable photostimulator that speeds up hair growth in mice. They report their results in ACS Nano.
Affecting millions of men and women worldwide, alopecia has several known causes, including heredity, stress, aging and elevated male hormones. Common treatments include medications, such as minoxidil, corticosteroid injections and hair transplant surgery. In addition, irradiating the bald area with a red laser can stimulate hair follicles, causing cells to proliferate. However, this treatment is often impractical for home use. So, Keon Jae Lee and colleagues wanted to develop a flexible, durable photostimulator that could be worn on human skin.
The team fabricated an ultrathin array of flexible vertical micro-light-emitting diodes (μLEDs). The array consisted of 900 red μLEDs on a chip slightly smaller than a postage stamp and only 20 μm thick. The device used almost 1,000 times less power per unit area than a conventional phototherapeutic laser, and it did not heat up enough to cause thermal damage to human skin. The array was sturdy and flexible, enduring up to 10,000 cycles of bending and unbending. The researchers tested the device’s ability to regrow hair on mice with shaved backs. Compared with untreated mice or those receiving minoxidil injections, the mice treated with the μLED patch for 15 minutes a day for 20 days showed significantly faster hair growth, a wider regrowth area and longer hairs.
The authors acknowledge funding from the Ministry of Science and ICT.
PAPER: Trichogenic Photostimulation Using Monolithic Flexible Vertical AlGalnP Light-Emitting Diodes
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/regrowi...baby-teeth
EXCERPT: Sometimes kids trip and fall, and their teeth take the hit. Nearly half of children suffer some injury to a tooth during childhood. When that trauma affects an immature permanent tooth, it can hinder blood supply and root development, resulting in what is essentially a “dead” tooth. Until now, the standard of care has entailed a procedure called apexification that encourages further root development, but it does not replace the lost tissue from the injury and, even in a best-case scenario, causes root development to proceed abnormally.
New results of a clinical trial, jointly led by Songtao Shi of the University of Pennsylvania and Yan Jin, Kun Xuan, and Bei Li of the Fourth Military Medicine University in Xi’an, China, suggest that there is a more promising path for children with these types of injuries: using stem cells extracted from the patient’s baby teeth. The work was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. “This treatment gives patients sensation back in their teeth. If you give them a warm or cold stimulation, they can feel it; they have living teeth again,” says Shi, professor and chair in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology in Penn’s School of Dental Medicine. “So far we have follow-up data for two, two and a half, even three years, and have shown it’s a safe and effective therapy.”
Songtao Shi
Shi has been working for a decade to test the possibilities of dental stem cells after discovering them in his daughter’s baby tooth. He and colleagues have learned more about how these dental stem cells, officially called human deciduous pulp stem cells (hDPSC), work, and how they could be safely employed to regrow dental tissue, known as pulp....
MORE: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/regrowi...baby-teeth
A wearable device for regrowing hair
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/press...-hair.html
RELEASE: Although some people embrace the saying “bald is beautiful,” for others, alopecia, or excessive hair loss, can cause stress and anxiety. Some studies have shown that stimulating the skin with lasers can help regrow hair, but the equipment is often large, consumes lots of energy and is difficult to use in daily life. Now, researchers have developed a flexible, wearable photostimulator that speeds up hair growth in mice. They report their results in ACS Nano.
Affecting millions of men and women worldwide, alopecia has several known causes, including heredity, stress, aging and elevated male hormones. Common treatments include medications, such as minoxidil, corticosteroid injections and hair transplant surgery. In addition, irradiating the bald area with a red laser can stimulate hair follicles, causing cells to proliferate. However, this treatment is often impractical for home use. So, Keon Jae Lee and colleagues wanted to develop a flexible, durable photostimulator that could be worn on human skin.
The team fabricated an ultrathin array of flexible vertical micro-light-emitting diodes (μLEDs). The array consisted of 900 red μLEDs on a chip slightly smaller than a postage stamp and only 20 μm thick. The device used almost 1,000 times less power per unit area than a conventional phototherapeutic laser, and it did not heat up enough to cause thermal damage to human skin. The array was sturdy and flexible, enduring up to 10,000 cycles of bending and unbending. The researchers tested the device’s ability to regrow hair on mice with shaved backs. Compared with untreated mice or those receiving minoxidil injections, the mice treated with the μLED patch for 15 minutes a day for 20 days showed significantly faster hair growth, a wider regrowth area and longer hairs.
The authors acknowledge funding from the Ministry of Science and ICT.
PAPER: Trichogenic Photostimulation Using Monolithic Flexible Vertical AlGalnP Light-Emitting Diodes