Japan pharma startup to begin human trials of tooth regrowth drug in 2024 | Hacker News Reader

Japan pharma startup to begin human trials of tooth regrowth drug in 2024

english.kyodonews.net

260 pointsanigbrowl87 comments

Awesome stuff. Seems legit, very keen tonsee thr results once their human trial concludes.

If it works, the founder will probably become richer than your average successful startup founders because the market is huge:

Who isn't dreading going to the doctor to get an implant after having to habe a tooth removed. Now you could just regrow that tooth.

I wonder if japan has a different regulatory structure - allowing this to happen there as opposed to other parts of the world, with different laws.

Japan has a regulatory agency, the PMDA, and you have to submit CDISC data from your trial to them to get anything approved. I’m not sure about the specifics of your question though.

So this is just for children that have "tooth buds" to get them to grow into full teeth?

So far. I'm sure someone is going to figure out how to engineer viable tooth buds for adults.

And as for "just for children" ... I had no idea how significant pediatric dental specialties were until my daughter fell out of a pickup truck onto the curb broke her two front teeth at the age of 3. Luckily her adult teeth grew in appropriately, but she still needs braces to fix the spacing in her smile that the injury left. It's been over a decade and I still feel terrible.

Certainly did not mean to imply that this would be insignificant due to being “just for children”! I should have said “exclusively for children” perhaps? Just wasn’t sure if adults have tooth buds!

Sorry to hear about what happened to your daughter.

I read a really terrible story years ago, a daughter was sunbathing in the driveway on a lounger, father comes home and parks... on his daughter, who is then paralyzed.

*Edit, found the article: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/31/experie...

I can't even imagine what that guy felt.

Humans and cars, bad combination.

Not mentioned in the article, but you can bet this was a large pickup or SUV. They have terrible visibility.

Article mentions four door sedan actually.

> He pulled up the driveway and the front of his four-door sedan [...]

This happens to one child per week in Australia. Very sad and common. https://www.dit.sa.gov.au/towardszerotogether/safe_road_user...

Humans have three sets of tooth buds, the third of which most people never use. The version of this treatment for adults would grow this last set.

Interestingly it took almost 30years to approve root channel treatment (in early 80s) and only 20more to make it universally available.

What a time to be alive! Just imagine the pain of our grandparents some 100-150years ago. We are living on a different planet now.

Having everything pulled out and replaced by dentures before it became a problem was a common coming of age present up until the 1930s.

The dentures were made of real teeth pulled from corpses. https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/agyegl/how_true_is...

It must have been hard to find healthy teeth from the corpses.

Probably not _that_ hard; a lot of people were dying very early back then.

https://bda.org/museum/collections/teeth-and-dentures/waterl...

The war was not invented yesterday.

I’ve always wondered about this. If you’re going to pull out all the teeth from a 15-year-old, presumably they’re mostly reasonably healthy. Why not make the denture out of the person’s original teeth?

Pulling out teeth. Especially healthy, well fixated ones. Is not easy. I imagine they damaged most of them beyond repair.

Oh, that makes sense. I guess I imagined the teeth coming out whole, cartoon-style.

I suppose the teeth from a not-fresh corpse are nice and loose and easy to collect.

> Having everything pulled out and replaced by dentures before it became a problem was a common coming of age present up until the 1930s.

My former dentist would like to politely dissagree.

And it should be illegal imo. When i was 22 and had one done the dentist failed to inform me of any of the risks of it failing (which tends to happen in 10-20 years), and i didn't appreciate how dangerous a failure of a root canal could be.

After getting a jaw infection which quickly lead to near fatal heart issues, and then a subsequent 6 in total surgeries to remove the infection, prepare a new post and have the tooth installed, over 3 years...i wish i either had no tooth there or went straight to the post the first time around. They're barely even the cheaper alternative to a post too, it's insane to me that anyone would prefer a root canal.

Root canals are taxidermy, we shouldn't do them. And no, i'm not part of this weird science ignoring cult of people that thinks all dental treatments give us low energy or destroy our manhood (https://www.todaysrdh.com/root-cause-netflix-documentary-let...) but I do think theres superior treatment and we should use it.

> but I do think theres superior treatment and we should use it.

What's that?

Get a post/implant put in. Lasts way longer (for your lifetime if you're careful with it), and if part of it does get damaged, chances are it can be repaired.

Well, I had only root canal treatments and luckily with no jaw or heart infections yet, but I have heard of serious issues from people who got implants. The skill of the dentist matters a lot I think.

How old are your root canals? The issue is the tooth is an organic component and it doesn’t last forever when it’s no longer supplied with blood. Once it becomes brittle, and cracks, the only solution is to remove it.

Yes, they likely will not hold till I am old, but till then they are working and it was less invasive, than an implant. So one day I likely will have implants, or if I am lucky, I might skip that and just regrow a tooth, if this tech will advance. In any case, the tech will be better in the future (unless worse stuff happens).

Yeah that sounds about right. I just wish i went right to the implant personally. The risks associated with it breaking, combined with the cost of essentially doing it twice...it all feels so pointless now.

I wonder if it can regrow exactly where the lost tooth was.

They seem to grow randomly throughout the body.

Good one

There is a cancer that does exactly that. Probably not fun.

"Teratomas"

Oh no, will the wisdom teeth grow back with this regrowth drug?

Maybe it will regrow in the right place

We growing teeth but still no hair

Meth is a helluva drug..so is sugar..

As far as I know body hair isn’t really important for your overall health, whereas teeth (and oral health in general) are extremely important. It would surprise me if we ended up being able to regrow teeth before having a non-surgical baldness remedy given how much people spend on getting their hair back, but I wouldn’t be disappointed.

Ok. So it is like some growth hormone for children pre-teeth-thing to grow into teeth. Sounds less scary than the headline would suggest.

First 'tooth regrowth' medicine moves toward clinical trials in Japan - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36563590 - July 2023 (299 comments)

I should have started maintaining a list of these 25 years ago, there would have been at least a dozen of projects intending to eliminate the tooth decay problem. Needless to say neither of them reached production.

This is amazing. Not interested in growing vampire teeth - but the ability to regrow teeth when lost - or get a new set of chompers without coffee stains sounds super cool :)

Please do hair next.

The streets of Denmark will be paved with gold if Novo Nordisk can cure baldness like they did for obesity.

...like they did for obesity, wait what? Looks down at beer belly. Looks back at computer. Wait what?

They're referring to Ozempic (semaglutide).

Ozempic is a lower dose of semaglutide for type-2 diabetes only. The higher maintenance dose (2.4 mg) marketed as Wegovy is for weight loss.

A weight loss oral medication will be available within a year or so, and it will dramatically reduce manufacturing costs. (The autoinjectors are very well designed and nearly painless, but they're very expensive and the whole thing is disposable.) It will still probably require a cold chain. Rybelsus is already available for diabetes but it isn't approved for weight loss in 3 7, and 14 mg doses. Novo Nordisk will likely issue an 50 mg per day for maintenance dose.

IANAD: If one can, they should first try to limit portion size because the risk of thyroid cancers with long-term semaglutide use is unknown and nonzero. There's a real possibility of another Vioxx/Fen-Phen moment.

My teeth regrow. I've mostly kept it a secret to myself because people disbelieve me. Good to know there's evidence it can be done now, I feel vindicated.

Can you share more information? Did it happen on it's own or was there some pharmacology used?

I've had cavities disappear, and teeth recover. I've had before and after x-rays side by side taken by shocked dentists. It's not to hard to believe, children teeth grow.

In all seriousness, if you have the patience and glasnost you should reach out to a scientist or related professional who can document this behaviour via bloods, x-rays, genomics or other means.

I study oral history and you’d be surprised what mundane information amazes people 50 years after the fact. Regrowing teeth would definitely fall into such a category, even if the evidence is unintelligible to present day dentists or you want aspects embargoed.

Like a shark, constantly changing?

A new set every ten to fifteen minutes. There are teeth all over my apartment.

That's cool. There is so much we still do not really understand.

Ever felt your hair growing on your back in full moon? /s

Is this only for missing teeths, or can they also use this for grown ups cavity stuff? Last time i got a cavity drilled out and filled was some like a decade ago it was annoying as fuck.

The article says that the initial plan is children who were born with missing teeth, and then for lost teeth in adults.

The way it's explained suggests these “tooth buds” they use disappear in adulthood however, so I'm not sure how that works.

I imagine there's some work going on (or intended work) looking at how to manufacture them from stem cells.

Humans have 3 sets of tooth buds. Most people never use the third set. For adults this treatment would aim to regrow the third set.

The article implies the third set disappears in adulthood.

Thanks for pointing this out — I actually assumed the linked article was a different one[1] which implied that the third set could replace dentures:

> When treatment of teeth is no longer possible due to severe cavities or erosion of the dental sockets, known as pyorrhea, people lose them and need to rely on dental appliances such as dentures. The ability to grow third-generation teeth could change that. "In any case, we're hoping to see a time when tooth-regrowth medicine is a third choice alongside dentures and implants," Takahashi said.

[1]: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20230609/p2a/00m/0sc/02...

Uh oh. Do they still like yaeba in Japan? A few years from now we might be seeing people with big old sabre-tooth fangs because it looks cute...

Any known side effects?

Some of the patients grew horns after the treatment, but those are easy to surgically remove so the clinical trial may go ahead.

You might not be able to close your mouth but the new file makes wonders. /s

Not related to the post, I recently read Japan not just good at automobiles and electronics, but also with pharmaceuticals and bio tech. What are some major pharmaceutical and bio tech companies in Japan?

If successful, I wonder if the next step is to enable adults to grow a fresh set of young teeth.

> If successful, I wonder if the next step is to enable adults to grow a fresh set of young teeth.

Yes, imagine your lunch break taking only 5 minutes because with 3 sets of teeths you became more efective at eating. /s

I only have one thing to say to all those people who brushed their teeth dutifully all these years.

Suckers!!

I would wait for the invoice to come before saying that! Dental care is crazy expensive.

Would it be a one off or some kind of subscription thing?

I think TaaS is the name. Tooth as a Service. /s

If you don't pay, your new teeths will decay.

With this approach dentistry can finally move away from being basically a glorified tooth repair shop, and usher in the 21st century with modern approaches.

Next up, psychiatry...

1 new brain, please!

I hope not. Imagine having to go through primary school again :(

If they start doing the brain replacement, I expect Apple level migration of data from old brain to new.

Let's hope they don't migrate whatever made you decide to get a new brain though. It'd suck if they also migrated mental illnesses and old traumas and stuff.

That's in the premium tier.

So I take over all the baggage I have?

brew install trauma - trauma could not be installed as its dependend on dependency hell

There are a lot of politicians (in the democratic countries) where the primary school didn't leave any trace. /s

https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/New_Brain_from_Currys

"Would you like to try the digestive tract remapping first? It's a lot less invasive, but, if it doesn't work you'll be depressed the entire time you're making a mess of yourself."

What about chiropractors, lol

Are you thinking of cutting out peoples' brains and then regrowing new ones?

it's crazy how primitive modern dental work is, and then when you consider how many bad dentists there are out there, it gets even scarier.

I wonder who will take these "drugs".

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