TONY EASTLEY: Japanese researchers are claiming to have made a breakthrough in organ transplant technology.
They've engineered an entire tooth from stem cells and successfully transplanted the tooth into a mouse. It's thought to be the first time a complex body part has been developed this way.
Mary Gearin reports.
MARY GEARIN: Creating a fully functional, complex tissue is the vital step scientists have been waiting for, according to Dr David Leavesley, a cell biologist from the Queensland University of Technology.
DAVID LEAVESLEY: That is the Golden Fleece, or if you like, that is the gold at end of rainbow that we're aiming for.
MARY GEARIN: And Japanese researchers appear to have found it. In an article published in the US Public Library of Science Journal, they've described growing a mature tooth from stem cells. Not just the tooth itself, but the ligament and bone around it.
Research team member Professor Takashi Tsuji from the Tokyo University of Science is speaking through a translator.
TAKASHI TSUJI (Translation): The multi types of cells to be combined in such a complex way and to create some parts of the body, this kind of technique I feel that the research department is becoming a pioneer.
MARY GEARIN: The procedure is notable on a number of fronts.
The team grew the tooth from the mature stem cells of an embryonic mouse. They were grown inside a drop of collagen, placed inside the kidney of a living mouse.*
This method proved more successful than any other the team had tried before.
Dr Leavesley.
DAVID LEAVESLEY: Now you could look at that cage as if it was an incubator, as a little bioreactor, and all the kidney's done is provide it with a nice warm, moist environment, with enough food and with a waste disposal system to get rid of the waste products, the toxins that simply growing creates and, so that's what's novel.
MARY GEARIN: The new tooth was then transplanted into another mouse's jaw successfully.
DAVID LEAVESLEY: No-one else that I'm aware of has been able to transplant a complex tissue, a complex organ structure like a tooth which is not a simple designed organ. But more importantly it provides it with those strong connections, the ligaments, which hold it in place.
MARY GEARIN: In the first instance, it's a breakthrough for dentistry, it offers an alternative to nerveless artificial teeth, and offers gum replacements for those with corrosive disease in the jaw.
Professor Eduardo Saiz holds the chair in structural ceramics at the Imperial College in London. He says it's an exciting advance.
EDUARDO SAIZ: So they have been able to recreate in the lab a complete tooth. So that's already a big accomplishment.
MARY GEARIN: The research echoes work by Melbourne scientists who've been growing mammary tissue inside the human body.
But because the tooth is a more complex structure than any grown before it opens up a range of surreal possibilities.
Dr Leavesly again.
DAVID LEAVESLEY: This is a bony tissue so I would predict that in a few years, and possibly within say 10 years, we can probably transplant, regenerate fingers and toes and perhaps even limbs. Ultimately we might even be able to generate eyes.
MARY GEARIN: Professor Tsuji says the ultimate goal is to grow livers and kidneys, to relieve the worldwide shortage of organs for transplants.
TAKASHI TSUJI'S TRANSLATOR: He would really wish to be able to help as many patients as possible by creating this technology further.
MARY GEARIN: That's the big dream. In the shorter term Professor Tsuji says the breakthrough's first commercial application will be for regeneration of hair follicles, perhaps the Golden Fleece for many others.
TONY EASTLEY: Mary Gearin.
*EDITOR'S NOTE: 13.7.11 The wording of this paragraph has been slightly changed in the interests of clarity.
The full story...
Bio-engineering breakthrough gives new hope for organ generation
Mary Gearin reported this story on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 08:12:00
