CaliToday (25/10/2025): For most people, the fear of the dentist is not just about the drill; it's about the grim finality of tooth loss. The current "solution" is a marvel of engineering but a brutal biological compromise: invasive surgery to drill a titanium screw into the jawbone. This is followed by months of waiting for the bone to fuse to the metal, creating an artificial root before a porcelain crown is attached.
 |
| A stained section of a tooth organoid grown in the lab at King’s College London. - Dr. Xuechen Zhang |
The final result is a "tooth" that is strong, but it is a dead thing. It has no feeling, no elasticity, and no living connection to the body.
But what if, instead of implanting a piece of metal, your dentist could simply implant a "tooth bud" grown from your own cells, allowing a new, living, biological tooth to grow in its place?
This is no longer science fiction. It is the "holy grail" of regenerative dentistry, and research groups around the world are in a high-stakes race to make it a clinical reality.
The Pioneer and the 'Conversation' in a Dish
At the forefront of this race is Dr. Ana Angelova Volponi, director of the postgraduate program in regenerative dentistry at King’s College London. For nearly two decades, she has been experimenting with lab-grown teeth. In 2013, her team achieved a landmark success: growing a "bio-tooth" by combining adult human gum cells with embryonic mouse cells.
Growing a tooth, she explained, is "almost like a tripod."
The Cells: You need two types of cells that engage in a "conversation" to start the tooth-making process.
The Conversation: The cells must be ableto signal each other.
The Environment: This "conversation" needs a place to happen.
In 2013, Dr. Volponi's team used human gingival cells—easily obtained by lightly scratching the inside of the mouth—and combined them with "progenitor" tooth cells from a mouse embryo. (Researchers are still working to replace the embryonic mouse cells with adult human cells).
But her team's very latest breakthrough, published this year, has solved a critical piece of the puzzle: the environment.
 |
| Xuechen Zhang and Ana Angelova Volponi in the laboratory at King’s College London. - Liqun Xu |
The Breakthrough: A 'Scaffold' for Life
The "environment" where the cells talk is called a "scaffold." In 2013, the team used a simple collagen scaffold. But the new study, co-authored by doctoral student Xuechen Zhang, uses a sophisticated hydrogel—a type of polymer with a high water content that perfectly mimics the actual environment in a human jaw where teeth naturally grow.
"We gather the cells first... mix them together... and spin them down to get a small cell pellet," Zhang explained. "Then we inject this cell pellet inside the hydrogel and grow it for around eight days."
This new hydrogel scaffold is a game-changer. It dramatically improves the "conversation" between the cells, allowing them to organize and form tooth-like structures, or "tooth primordia," inside the lab dish. In their previous research, these primordia were transferred into a mouse, where they successfully developed into a tooth structure complete with roots and enamel.
Dr. Volponi envisions two possible paths to the dentist's chair:
The 'Bud' Method: Grow the tooth bud in the lab and then embed it into the empty tooth socket. The bud would then grow into a full, biological tooth, naturally incorporating itself into the bone and ligament.
The 'Full Tooth' Method: Fully grow the entire tooth in the lab and then surgically implant it.
"It’s still too early to say which approach will be more viable," Volponi said, but the advantages are clear. A real, biological tooth grown from a patient's own cells would be perfectly accepted by the tissue, eliminating inflammation or rejection. Most importantly, it would feel exactly like a real tooth, connected to the nervous system and possessing the natural elasticity that titanium implants lack.
A Global Race with Different Tactics
Volponi's team isn't the only one in the race. Several other groups are tackling the problem from different, equally exciting angles.
Japan (The Antibody "Drug"): In Osaka, Dr. Katsu Takahashi is developing an antibody-based treatment. This "drug" would be aimed at stimulating the growth of teeth in people with anodontia (a congenital lack of teeth). This revolutionary approach, which has already entered human clinical trials, could be ready by 2030.
USA (The Pig Model): In late 2024, a team at Tufts University led by Pamela Yelick successfully grew human-like teeth (from human and pig cells) inside pigs. Their ultimate goal is to figure out how to prompt cells in a human jaw to simply regrow a new tooth on command.
USA (The "Blueprint" from Scratch): At the University of Washington, Dr. Hannele Ruohola-Baker's team is taking a more fundamental approach. They have successfully grown dental pulp stem cells from scratch using stem cells mined from donated wisdom teeth. "We aim to uncover the molecular blueprint of human tooth formation," she said, by guiding "key human tooth-forming cell types along authentic developmental trajectories."
While all these methods differ, the goal is the same: to make the drill and the titanium screw obsolete. And according to the experts, the wait may not be that long.
"Although clinical translation will take time, momentum in this field is accelerating," said Ruohola-Baker. She predicts a future in which biological tooth repair or replacement becomes "a realistic option within the coming decade."