Using urine to grow new teeth.  Say what?

There’s intriguing research that was recently published by the peer-reviewed journal Cell Regeneration on how your own urine can be used to create “tooth-like structures” using induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells for short. These cells are basically adult cells that have been genetically reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell-like state so that researchers can attempt to program them into any type of cell in the human body.

Researchers from China’s Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health basically took cells from urine to create tiny, hard structures that resemble teeth.  The cells were then placed into the jawbones of mice and a few weeks later resulted in structures that grew to resemble real teeth like enamel, dentin, and pulp.

Wait up sparky!  Before you go running to your dentist and asking them to take samples of your urine and have them create replacement teeth for you, the research showed only a 30% success rate and is only in the initial experimental stages so don’t expect this type of procedure to be popping up at your dentist’s office anytime soon.  In the meantime, the surest way to try to keep your pearly whites is to brush 2x a day for 2 minutes each and floss.

Seriously, do you really want urine in your mouth even though it was genetically modified?  Think of it this way, do you want to be drinking your own pee (or someone else’s) even if it was purified enough to become drinking water just like the astronauts do up in the space station?  In the meantime, I’m going to the store and keep buying gallons of water.