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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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Futurology
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Lots of hopium in the article. The base treatment seems to be for 2-7 years old missing teeths.
I mean you can't just inject some stuff and have a random tooth grow out.
I'm 36, so you telling me theres a chance I won't need dentures when I'm in my 70s?
There's a crazy lot of stuff that will happen in the upcoming decades. IMO.
Well, that's not actually the first thing they're testing:
I'm guessing the idea is to catch teeth that could have developed but never did (hey, I'm missing one that way). Otherwise I'm not sure how they'd control which type and how many show up.
Annoyingly there's no English language link, so it's hard to say. I'm not even clear on what they did with the ferrets.
Here you go! https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1798
A ferret got an extra tooth
Ah, thanks!
So the meat of this is actually the mouse models, looks like. Strains of mice with genetically missing teeth got them back.
They basically just juiced normal ferrets to see what would happen, and they grew an extra incisor as you can see in the images posted. I'm guessing developing genetically toothless ferrets wasn't in the scope of their funding. You can get all kinds of weird lab mice "off the shelf", though.
Based on the studies I've seen, that's exactly what the researchers are hoping for in the long run
Crazy if it works, but the whole biotech field is boiling right now so who knows?
Boiling?
There is a lot of research and interesting things going on right now, from those latest vaccines that are amazing (and not only for vaccinating), CRISPR, longevity research etc etc etc.
It really feels like we went from "trying out 100.000 random things to see if we can somewhat cure something" to using a more direct approach like targeted interventions and designed drugs & molecules.