There are a lot of interesting stories in my family because I hail from a curious lot, however, one of my favorites has always been of how my, will call her Great Aunt Mackey for the purposes of this story, joined a clinical drug trial well over a half century ago and subsequently began regrowing her lost teeth.
Now, as I understand it, teeth regrowing was not the intended consequence of the medication my Great Aunt Mackey was voluntarily guzzling like a lab rat every day, just a happy side effect apparently. When asked, no one “remembered” why Great Aunt Mackey was enrolled in this clinical drug trial, and this denial of memory was usually followed by some admonishment against being a“nosy parker” from my other family members who belonged to the delightful “children should be seen and not heard from” generation.
Recently, I learned of a medication developed by Japanese medical researchers that is re-growing teeth and it is being lauded as a medical breakthrough when I know, courtesy of my Great Aunt Mackey’s late in life, newfound tooth growing parlor trick, the healthcare crew have known about at least one medication that could regrow teeth for quite some time, and it makes me wonder just how many illnesses are there cures for the public remains clueless about?
According to science, adult teeth cannot repair or regenerate themselves once they have been impaired or lost, which opens the door for therapy targeting USAG-1, a protein associated with limiting tooth development recently discovered by a Japanese medical research group.
An article on the online website www.popularmechanics.com reports this new therapy shows signs of stimulating signal repair that might allow new teeth to reappear. The article also discusses encouraging medical studies conducted using animal subjects that included ferrets and mice, with little to no harmful side effects reported. For this reason, Japanese researchers announced the possibility of advancing studies with human volunteers.
For the other nerds like me out there, initial planned studies were slated to be performed over an approximate 11-month trial period using males aged between 30 and 64 years of age and missing at least one tooth. The article further claims the treatment will be administered via IV and may one day later expand to include children aged between 2 and 7 with a prerequisite of congenital tooth deficiency.
This miraculous discovery was allegedly made in 2021, when the Japanese research team from Kyoto University, who are credited with the discovery, located a monoclonal antibody interrupting the interaction between USAG-1 and molecules, known also as bone morphogenetic protein, or BMP. This therapy is also used to treat cancer.
Considering this exciting news, and my Great Aunt Mackey’s knack for regrowing teeth, what do you think, is some mysterious “they” keeping stuff from us?
I mean, have we cured cancer? Is the Lizard Man real?