Lexington, MA (April 25, 2011) – Behind the therapeutic promise of the stem cells found in teeth is the work of scientists such as Paul Sharpe, Ph.D., a pioneer in research that promises to expand regenerative dentistry.

Dr. Sharpe is the Dickinson Professor of Craniofacial Biology and head of the Department of Craniofacial Development at the Dental Institute, King's College London. He also serves as an advisor to Provia Laboratories, LLC, which provides Store-A-Tooth dental stem cell banking. This service enables families to collect and preserve the stem cells from their children’s teeth for future use.

Dr. Sharpe has earned an international reputation for his research into using stem cells to grow new teeth. He has demonstrated in animal studies that a natural tooth, together with its associated bone, root, and nerves, will grow from a tooth "bud" or "primordium" of stem cells placed into an incision in the gum.

He will be among the invited speakers this week at the First International Conference on Dental and Craniofacial Stem Cells in New York City. There he will discuss his most recent research into the niches in tooth pulp where stem cells reside.¹

"In the future we envision," explains Dr. Sharpe, "a patient who loses a tooth and wants a replacement will be able to choose between current methods and a biological-based implant—a new natural tooth—derived from the patient’s own dental stem cells."

Notwithstanding steady progress in the prevention and treatment of dental disease, the toothless and those lacking some or most of their teeth still make up a huge population. According to dental-health surveys, about 70 percent of adults in the United States have lost at least one tooth; about 58 percent of those aged 50 and older have fewer than the 21 teeth considered ‘functional dentition’; and about 18 percent aged 65 or older have no natural teeth at all.²

To be sure, it will be some years before there is no one removing a mouthful of dentures at night to place them in a cup on the bedside table. Yet the work of Dr. Sharpe and other investigators has brought another option into view.

In 2004, for example, he and his colleagues reported in the Journal of Dental Research (JDR) that they had used stem cells to grow teeth in mice.3 The stem cells used in that work were not human dental stem cells but rather mouse embryonic stem cells and bone-marrow-derived stem cells. Even so, as the editor of JDR said in a commentary, "Clearly, the future for regenerative and tissue-engineering application to dentistry is one with immense potential, capable of bringing quantum advances in treatment for our patients."4 Later Dr. Sharpe and his team received the William J. Gies Award for best paper published in JDR that year in the category of biomaterials and bioengineering.

Dr. Sharpe has noted the particular advantages that human dental stem cells offer in taking this research further: Unlike human embryonic stem cells, they are plentiful and raise no ethical issues—a potential source becomes available every time a dentist or dental surgeon pulls a loose baby tooth or a molar; unlike bone-marrow stem cells, dental stem cells do not require an additional invasive procedure to obtain; and dental stem cells can be preserved for the donor’s own use, eliminating the chance of rejection if later used for the donor.

Although experiments in growing new teeth remain early-stage research, other applications of dental stem cells have already been demonstrated in human studies. These cells have been successfully used to regrow jawbone and treat periodontal disease.

Moreover, leading-edge research in regenerative dentistry fosters progress in regenerative medicine as well. Teeth, unlike, say, the pancreas or the heart, are readily accessible, making it relatively easy to do procedures that demonstrate general principles in organ restoration.

As Dr. Sharpe once quipped, "Patients just have to come in and open their mouths."

About Provia Laboratories LLC Provia Laboratories, LLC (www.provialabs.com) is a healthcare services company specializing in high quality biobanking (preservation of biological specimens). The company's Store-A-Tooth™ service platform enables the collection, transport, processing, and storage of dental stem cells for potential use in future stem-cell therapies. The company advises industrial, academic, and governmental clients on matters related to the preservation of biological specimens for research and clinical use. In addition, Provia offers a variety of products for use in complex biobanking environments to improve sample logistics, security, and quality. Provia Labs is a member of ISBER, the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories.

Footnotes
¹ Title: The rodent incisor mesenchymal stem cell niche.
² Sources: "Oral Health Resources," 2008, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and "Oral Health, U.S., 2002," produced by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. These data derive from various surveys conducted in prior years. "Oral Health, U.S., 2002" defines the functional dentition of 21 as enough "to eat, speak, and socialize without active disease, discomfort, or embarrassment" without need of dentures. A full set of adult teeth numbers 32.
³ Ohazama A, Modino SA, Miletich I, Sharpe PT. Stem-cell-based tissue engineering of murine teeth. J Dent Res. 2004;83:518-522.
⁴ Smith AJ. Tooth tissue engineering and regeneration—a translational vision! J Dent Res. 2004;83:517.

Amid the scientific enthusiasm and occasional political controversy over stem cells, Paul Krasner is calling for leadership from what might at first seem a profession detached from the issue: dentistry.

"It's up to us as dentists to develop this field," says Dr. Krasner, D.D.S., a Diplomate of the American Board of Endodontics, a professor of clinical endodontics at Temple University School of Dentistry in Philadelphia, PA and a founding advisor of Store-A-Tooth™.

What brings dentists and oral surgeons into the field is a discovery made at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2000 yet often obscured by other stem cell news: The discovery that teeth can be a rich source of stem cells—especially baby teeth that come loose during childhood, wisdom teeth extracted from teens or young adults, and teeth that need to be pulled to make room for braces.

Indeed, laboratories and clinics around the world are investigating the promise of these cells in wide-ranging dental and medical applications. In human studies, stem cells from teeth have already been used to regrow jawbone and treat periodontal disease.

In a "Viewpoint" article appearing in the February 2011 issue of Dentistry Today, Dr. Krasner tells his colleagues that they will play a lead role in enabling stem-cell therapies if current research fulfills its promise. (Dr. Krasner recently co-authored a CE course about dental stem cells, published by www.dentalcetoday.com.)

"With the recognition that there are valuable stem cells in teeth," he says, "the dentist may become the primary provider of cells that can be used in the future by physicians for the treatment of a variety of conditions such as diabetes, spinal cord injury, myocardial infarction, and neurological diseases like Parkinson's."

He urges dentists to support research and clinical studies, educate their staff and their patients, and promote sound policy on dental stem cell preservation. His remarks echo a 2008 policy statement on stem cells by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.

In his role as an advisor, Dr. Krasner provides clinical expertise to Store-A-Tooth, a service that lets families preserve the stem cells in their children's teeth. By banking stem cells now, families can be prepared to take advantage of future advances in stem cell research. Store-A-Tooth is a service provided by Provia Laboratories, LLC.

The process is simple. The patient's family makes an appointment when a baby tooth is ready to fall out or a wisdom tooth needs to be extracted – it's recommended to have the tooth taken out by a dental professional so its blood supply is still intact. After removing the tooth, the dentist or oral surgeon places it into a kit designed to protect the tooth during overnight transport to the cell-preservation facility. There the sample is decontaminated, tested to confirm its sterility, and the dental pulp harvested from the tooth. Quality control tests such as flow cytometry are performed to confirm that stem cell biomarkers are present in the samples, which are then stored at extremely low temperatures so that the stem cells can be retrieved and used in future years. Although only continuing research will determine which types of stem cells will best meet specific needs, stem cells from teeth clearly hold certain advantages:

• They are easy to collect, unlike bone-marrow stem cells, which are harvested by an invasive procedure.
• They can be obtained at various times during youth, unlike umbilical cord blood stem cells, which become available only at birth.
• They are not subject to the ethical concerns that have been raised about embryonic stem cells.

Dr. Krasner, for his part, has made a practical contribution to preserving stem cells from teeth: He invented the tooth-transport device chosen for the Store-A-Tooth service. Called Save-A-Tooth®, it is the only device approved by the FDA and accepted by the American Dental Association to preserve knocked-out teeth following injury. It has been recommended as a component of every first-aid kit by both the Mayo Clinic and the NIH. Just as it protects a knocked-out tooth until the tooth can be reimplanted, it provides high-quality protection of an extracted tooth with its stem cells during transport from a dentist's office to Provia Labs' facility for long-term preservation.

And Dr. Krasner practices what he preaches. Store-a-Tooth is preserving the stem cells from his own son's wisdom teeth.

About Provia Laboratories LLC.
Provia Laboratories, LLC (www.provialabs.com) is a healthcare services company specializing in high quality biobanking (preservation of biological specimens). The company’s Store-A-Tooth™ service platform enables the collection, transport, processing, and storage of dental stem cells for potential use in future stem-cell therapies. The company advises industrial, academic, and governmental clients on matters related to the preservation of biological specimens for research and clinical use. In addition, Provia offers a variety of products for use in complex biobanking environments to improve sample logistics, security, and quality. Provia Labs is a member of ISBER, the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories.