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Comment by EvanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

Same feeling here. Dental seems particularly fraught (though maybe I just pay more attention to it out of interest). I know the cycle time between press releases/hype and actual application can be the better part of a decade, so I assume that's coloring my perception too.

re: dental in particular - It seems like enamel regeneration and stem-cell-based tooth replacement have both been in the news year-after-year without applications actually coming to market.

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Does anyone know why casein phosphopeptide (Recaldent) hasn't had more success? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9294493/ You can buy the Japanese gum with Recaldent online, but I expected it to be in the gum display in retail shops by now.

Everyone knows that teeth are luxury bones in the US. The market just isn't there for fancy treatments. The ultra-wealthy just get their teeth replaced with perfect veneers anyway.

> The ultra-wealthy just get their teeth replaced with perfect veneers anyway.

Na, that’s the working class turkey teeth crowd.

> stem-cell-based tooth replacement

Really? This sounds more like someone's plan to get grants to research stem cells than someone's plan to repair (or replace) teeth.

We already have a natural ability to grow new teeth that replace existing ones. Everybody does it... once. Where's the research into getting it to happen again?

Theet formation is a very early procces, even before the baby is born.

> Primary (baby) teeth start to form between the sixth and eighth week of prenatal development, and permanent teeth begin to form in the twentieth week.

So it's probably too late for you.

Some people do have a third set of teeth in there.

Probably a genetic mutation, like the people that has 6 fingers in each hand.

Had to check again. Apparently all humans have them.

> So it's probably too late for you.

What's the argument here? You don't think I'm going to live for another 8 years?

Adult bones are probably harder, a growing unexpedted theet may be painful, I don't recomend to be the first to try the method.

There has been a ton of research in the area of re-growing teeth from stem cells. A cursory search-engining will turn up a ton of articles, some going back decades, and many giving the impression that it's close to happening. I've been following it for awhile because I knew I'd be in the market for a new tooth eventually.

Here's an example of one from earlier this year at King's College, London: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/lab-grown-teeth-might-become-an-a...

There have been a lot of research around USAG-1, too [1]:

> Uterine sensitization-associated gene-1 (USAG-1) deficiency leads to enhanced bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling, leading to supernumerary teeth formation.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33579703/

If that could be targeted at a given tooth site (i.e. I don't want to go thru another round of deciduous teeth across my entire mouth) that would be pretty cool. We're each carrying a perfect growth matrix for new teeth, after all.

If it just repeated the process everyone is already familiar with, in which each of your teeth falls out and grows back in one at a time over a period of several years, it would already be a perfect solution to tooth decay and demand would be massive.

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