It’s no wonder that the dental industry makes billions of dollars every year. Whether you’re looking for that Hollywood smile or simply want a pain-free eating experience, most of us turn to the dentist at least once or twice a year.

But there’s no question about the fact that looking after our teeth is expensive. And we’re not even talking cosmetic work here: even the necessary procedures to care for or repair damage to your teeth can set you back hundreds, or even thousands of dollars.

When your teeth are in trouble, there really is very little to smile about.

But what if, instead of needing that expensive (and often uncomfortable) dental work, you could regrow your teeth instead?

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but this is exactly the task that researchers at King’s College London have set themselves over the last decade.

And thanks to a new breakthrough in their process, the team have found a potential new way that we might be able to regrow our own teeth in the future.

Ever found a shark tooth on the beach? Well, unlike us humans, a missing tooth isn’t too much bother to a shark. That’s because they continue to grow teeth throughout their lives.

Rather like the way that your adult teeth grow in once your baby teeth have fallen out, the research – which was recently published in the journal ACS Macro Letters – suggests that with further progress in the field, we might one day be able to regenerate our own teeth, much in the same way that other members of the animal kingdom do.

And, according to researcher Xuechen Zhang, in a statement from the Faculty of Dentistry, Oral & Craniofacial Sciences, King’s College London, the lab-grown teeth that they have succeeded in generating are much better alternatives to our traditional dental care procedures:

“Fillings aren’t the best solution for repairing teeth. Over time, they will weaken tooth structure, have a limited lifespan, and can lead to further decay or sensitivity. Implants require invasive surgery and good combination of implants and alveolar bone. Both solutions are artificial and don’t fully restore natural tooth function, potentially leading to long-term complications.”

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about these lab-grown teeth is that, unlike our own teeth, they would have the ability to regenerate. This is thanks to the adaptations that the researchers made to their composition, with specific materials releasing signals to encourage our cells to grow new teeth long after this process would have naturally stopped in humans.

Add to this the fact that they are stronger and less prone to falling out than our current dental implants and fillings, and you can begin to understand why these teeth could be an almighty step forward for our dental health.

Of course, these lab-grown teeth are still at an early stage. Next is testing them out in willing human volunteers, as Xuechen continued:

“We have different ideas to put the teeth inside the mouth. We could transplant the young tooth cells at the location of the missing tooth and let them grow inside mouth. Alternatively, we could create the whole tooth in the lab before placing it in the patient’s mouth. For both options, we need to start the very early tooth development process in the lab.”

As the regenerative teeth continue in their testing, researchers in the field of regenerative medicine are waiting with bated breath, eager to find out how individual human bodies respond to the ground-breaking processes.

Maybe in the not too distant future, losing a tooth will feel like no big deal at all. After all, you can grow a new one in no time.

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