Wisdom teeth useful after all, have stem cells

NEW DELHI: The good for nothing painful wisdom tooth may finally have some worth. Doctors say the wisdom tooth, which is usually extracted, is a rich source of stem cells. The soft pulp inside the tooth contains a population of cells — known as mesenchymal stromal cells — which are similar to cells found in bone marrow, a common stem cell source. However, unlike bone marrow, tooth pulp is more easily obtained, especially in wisdom teeth that most individuals get removed anyway, said Dr Franck Chaubron from the Institute Clinident Biopharma. Dr Chaubron, who was recently in the country to set up Stemade Biotech, India's first dental stem cell bank that will be launched in a month in Chennai, said international studies conducted with stem cells extracted from a wisdom tooth have shown tremendous promise in regenerating damaged bones, cornea and cardiac muscles. "You don't necessarily have to remove the wisdom tooth to extract the stem cells from the pulp. Usually, the pulp has a million cells, 20% of which will be stem cells. It can be extracted from a person aged between 12 and 30. Dental stem cells are very easy to extract. They have high quantity of stem cells in them and can be applied for many regenerative applications," Dr Chaubron told TOI. On Saturday, in a new study in the "Journal of Biological Chemistry" scientists from Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology confirmed that third molars — commonly known as wisdom teeth — are a valuable reservoir of stem cells. "Thus everyone might be carrying around his or her own personal stem-cell repository should he or she ever need some," the scientists said. The researchers, led by Hajime Ohgushi, collected tooth samples from three donors and managed to generate a series of stem cell lines which displayed varying degrees of "robustness but in some cases proliferated quite well, up to 100 times more efficiently than typical skin-cell-derived stem cells. The molar-derived cells also could differentiate into many other cell types including beating cardiomyocytes." Shailesh Gadre, MD of Stemade, said, "We have also harvested excellent amounts of stem cells from children's milk tooth. Wisdom tooth extraction is a common medical procedure in developed nations. If done in a sterilised setting, we can freeze the cells in liquid nitrogen for years until needed by which time its new applications will be found by researchers working on dental stem cells." Scientists say the dental stem cells are located in areas next to nerve and blood vessels within the pulp of the tooth. Stem cells are master cells of the body that are not yet specialised and differentiated for a particular function/organ or tissue application. These stem cells have been found in tissues such as brain, bone marrow, blood, blood vessels, skeletal muscles, skin and liver. They remain in a quiescent or non-dividing state for years until activated by disease or tissue injury.

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