October 17, 2017.
According to a team of researchers from Imperial College London, keeping her children’s baby teeth could one day save their lives.
Baby teeth are rich in stem cells
Parents don’t always keep their children’s baby teeth, and they are wrong. In any case, this is what Sara Rankin, a biologist at Imperial College London, argues in an interview for BBC News. According to his work, we would find stem cells in the teeth of milk which would make it possible to cure serious diseases and even some cancers. Until now, we have been looking for stem cells in the embryo or in the blood of the umbilical cord.
Stem cells are very valuable because they have two properties, “ that of self-renewing indefinitely, offering an unlimited stock of material, and that of being able to give birth to several cell types », Explains the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm). And thanks to cell therapy, we can transplant healthy cells in order to restore the function of a tissue or organ.
Stem cell research advances
According to Sara Rankin, “ to recycle »Her child’s baby teeth for keeping your stem cells could therefore be very useful in the event of leukemia (blood cancer), for example. However, it should be noted that the storage of stem cells for therapeutic purposes is prohibited in France but is authorized in Switzerland. In this country, there are storage banks for stem cells.
Some researchers argue that the full capabilities of stem cells have not yet been explored. Maybe they could be used one day to treat Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease or diabetes. It should be noted, however, that to extract stem cells from milk teeth, they should be pulled out before they fall to remove the stem cells quickly and store them at less than 190 °.
Marine Rondot
Read also: A blind man partially regains his sight thanks to an autologous transplant of skin cells
