[news.sciencemag.org]

"When an adult loses a tooth, there's no hope of growing a new one—unless you've got a mouse kidney handy. In a new study, researchers injected human gum tissue extracted during oral surgery into the molars of fetal mice. After giving the cells a week to get used to each other, the scientists implanted the chimeric concoction into the protective tissue surrounding the kidneys of living mice. There, 20% of the cells developed into objects recognizable as teeth (more real than the dentures pictured above), complete with the root structures missing from artificial tooth implants. The next step is to transplant these so-called "bioteeth" back into human mouths and see if they grow into something that we can chew on—or rather, with. "

[www.bbc.co.uk]

"Dentists may one day be able to replace missing teeth with ones newly grown from gum cells, say UK researchers.

The team from King's College London took cells from adult human gum tissue and combined them with another type of cell from mice to grow a tooth.

They say using a readily available source of cells pushes the technology a step nearer to being available to patients.

But it is still likely to be many years before dentists can use the method.

Other work has focused on using embryonic stem cells to create "bioteeth".

It proved it could be done but is expensive and impractical for use in the clinic, the researchers said.

In the latest study they took human epithelial cells from the gums of human patients, grew more of them in the lab and mixed them with mesenchyme cells from mice.

The mesenchyme cells were cultured to be "inducing" - they instruct the epithelial cells to start growing into a tooth.

Transplanting the cell combination into mice, researchers were able to grow hybrid human/mouse teeth that had viable roots, they reported in the Journal of Dental Research."

Is this from The Onion?

It is all good when other happy animals can be used to make spare human parts. Pig heart valves can be grown too and swap. If it makes money is all good. It would be funny if another species came from space and puts the humans to WORK. It would be justified.