Potential Uses For Extracted Teeth
In August 2008, it was revealed that scientists in Japan were able to successfully harvest stem cells from wisdom teeth. This discovery is of great clinical importance, as wisdom tooth extractions are a relatively common type of oral surgery. Patients who have their wisdom teeth removed are currently able to opt to have stem cells from those teeth isolated and saved, in case they should ever need the cells.
Wisdom teeth can be transplanted to replace lost molars. Rejection applies to teeth just like it does to other body tissue, and donor trials so far have been unsuccessful. The transplantation will cause some damage to the tooth during the transplant process, most notably the nerve, but moving the tooth to another position for the same person is now considered successful and beneficial.
Read more about this topic: Wisdom Tooth
Famous quotes containing the words potential, extracted and/or teeth:
“Most days I feel like an acrobat high above a crowd out of which my own parents, my in-laws, potential employers, phantoms of “other women who do it” and a thousand faceless eyes stare up.”
—Anonymous Mother. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 2 (1978)
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—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“These hunt, as they have done
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,
More deadly than they can believe.”
—James Dickey (b. 1923)