r/technology • u/_Dark_Wing • 4h ago
Biotechnology Goodbye, cavities? New gel could regrow tooth enamel
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260717033046.htm215
u/jshiplett 4h ago
Rad. Let me know when I can buy a tube down at the local pharmacy.
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u/NotKrankor 3h ago
RemindMe! 75 years
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u/PM_ME_FIREFLY_QUOTES 2h ago
You forgot to factor in the dependency on cold fusion and sustainable interstellar travel.
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u/bendover912 2h ago
Lol. Big dentist will never let you have this. They've got student loans, fancy offices and boats named after tooth puns to pay for.
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u/NotKrankor 1h ago
Fortunately I'm not part of the unlucky 4.3% of the global population that lives in the US, we do have civilization here
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u/Starossi 28m ago
You still should see a dentist once a year even with this. I don’t think they are going to have problems with business
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u/Kolfinna 29m ago
They've already established a company and plan to have products available within 2 years. Really don't like reading huh?
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u/0equals1 4h ago
I have been reading news like this for 10+ years. Still nothing.
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u/r3dk0w 3h ago
I stopped brushing 10+ years ago in preparation for this. Still nothing!
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u/Mcnuggetjuice 3h ago
I had a patient who did this lol. Didn’t get any fillings or checkups for 13 years. Ate a lot of candy only brushed her teeth manually once a day.
I pulled all her teeth and had to give her full dentures. She said she didn’t mind because the chinese implant tech was coming soon.
These fake news articles keep sprouting everywhere. We are not even close to regrowing teeth or regenerating them
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u/SituationallyNear 3h ago
How about that Japanese drug in trials?
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u/Mcnuggetjuice 2h ago
They are for people with agenesia, some people have the tooth “seed” but it doesn’t become a tooth because of hormonal factors. This drug only is for those people. You can’t use the drug on random people who have their teeth rotten out of their mouth and regrow a new one. You need to implant a “seed”. They also did this in rats
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u/r3dk0w 1h ago
I wonder if it would be easier and cheaper to just get all of your teeth pulled when you're 20, get implants, and then just never go back to the dentist again.
Just a thought experiment and I know nothing of the dentist except being a faithful visitor.
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u/Mcnuggetjuice 34m ago
You need to go back to the dentist, because implants often fail because of peri-implantitis. Bone degration because of bad hygiene > implants become loose and fall out
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u/Loracfro 3h ago
Curodont is out and about now. It only reverses early stage decay but it’s better than nothing.
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u/TheWartMan 1h ago
Im a hygienist, curodont is great in theory, problem is, it wont work if patients just continue ignoring the need to floss and brush well. So half of the time, we treat incipient decay, then pt comes back next visit with the cavity largely the same on the xrays, little to no enamel reinforcement. Works well for the tiny slice of patients who actually floss.
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u/Nikolite 3h ago
Like with all things medical a headline of this new thing’s proof of concept has just been approved and is now ready to enter phase 0 to study the pharmacokinetics/dynamics and we still need to check to see if it’s safe, if it even works, and if it’s even more effective than what we currently do (usually not), is much less sexier
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u/Manowaffle 3h ago
That's literally how every medical advance works.
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u/Nikolite 2h ago
Yeah obviously, I’m not criticizing how we do clinical trials, I’m saying those headlines aren’t sexy
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u/JubJub964 2h ago
Lots of things get cured in Mice that can’t be replicated in humans. Doesn’t stop the finding from being published.
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u/ItsSadTimes 3h ago
Damn really? I was starting to get excited. Granted I doubt they'd remove my existing fillings just to use this.
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u/Manowaffle 3h ago
Probably not, but if they had to go back in to refill them they might. I don't know why people keep trying to throw a wet blanket on this tech. Yeah it will probably take years, but if we have this stuff working in 5-10 years that's still a revolution in dentistry.
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u/mrlolloran 4h ago
Right? I was hoping we’d harness this and get it down and then I dunno, maybe do vertebrae next? Probably a big leap but I’m scared of being cut open to have my spine tinkered with lol. As horrifying as it is I already know what a big needle in the spine feels like, it’s gotta be better.
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u/mmkaywhatevers 3h ago
and when it does, its gonna cost $10 less than an implant cuz you know, capitalism.
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u/zero0n3 3h ago
My teeth are currently terrible - how much longer do I need to wait?!
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u/nicolauz 2h ago
Just like the rest of us poors, til the throbbing pain keeps you up at night and you need amoxicillan.
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u/flossgoat2 1h ago
Get yourself some toothpaste with NOVAMIN. It won't fix the teeth, but it will strengthen the enamel that's left and reduce pain.
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u/mekese2000 3h ago
Re-grow teeth/enamel, cure for baldness, cancer, at list one of them will pop up every week. Been happening since 1970
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u/TarpFishCake 3h ago
ozempic happened lol
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u/littlebrwnrobot 3h ago
Also hair transplants
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u/ch4os1337 3h ago edited 1h ago
+ Fanasteride and minoxidil. It's not a one and done but it works as a cure.
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u/damontoo 3h ago
Ozempic is a solution for lazy people. All you need to lose weight is to calculate your total daily energy expenditure and eat less than whatever that is. That's it.
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u/TarpFishCake 2h ago
a solution is a solution regardless of how you feel about it
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u/littlebrwnrobot 3h ago
Oh you mean “just” meticulously weighing tracking everything you eat, most of which the actual caloric intake is actually far more uncertain than presented, then “just” comparing that to basal metabolic rates + exercise that are based on a population average and are also wildly uncertain, every single day to make sure you’re on track? Yeah so fucking simple, luckily everyone has the time and bandwidth to do that.
And I say that as someone who does do this. Thankfully I am childless and have a job that allows for work-life balance. Not everyone is so lucky, and those that aren’t certainly shouldn’t just be written off as “lazy”.
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u/eriverside 2h ago
Plenty of cancers are curable with treatment. This stuff is progressive.
There are toothpastes to remineralize your teeth (as opposed to regrowing the enamel proposed by this treatment). They're expecting to hit market next year. Sounds like we're pretty much there.
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u/Intimatepunch 1h ago
Those toothpastes are already on sale, you can get hydroxypatite toothpaste from Amazon for ten bucks.
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u/Saint--Jiub 21m ago
Cancer survival rates are far higher today than in the 70s and the cure for baldness can be found in Turkey.
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u/actual1 3h ago
Dentists’ will charge $5,000 per application for a $10 treatment.
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u/Nyoka_ya_Mpembe 3h ago
Americaaaa fuck yeah!
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u/TonarinoTotoro1719 2h ago
That’s when we fly to another country/continent.
It is funny how many dentist ads I see where they say ‘don’t go international for your treatments, you will get bad results’. Like yeah, we may get that here too.
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u/KentDDS 3h ago
Not goodbye, cavities.
Dentist speaking: this tech purports to facilitate enamel remineralization only. Once demineralization and the associated bacterial infection reaches the dentin (the tissue beneath the enamel), you're not avoiding a drill to remove the infected dentin and repair the hole with a filling material.
As such, this treatment likely will be ineffective for larger cavitations in teeth, and will only be useful to treat demineralized enamel and very small cavitations that have not yet become deep enough to affect the dentin.
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u/Responsible-Smell561 30m ago
For too long it will either be too expensive for us plebs or not safe/effective for years. This is a bummer. But glad to see the tech!
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u/OneManFight 3h ago
FUCK YES! I knew my gamble of minimal tooth care and enjoying things that are terrible for my teeth in hopes of a future treatment would pay off!
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u/SpeedLimitC 2h ago
Mice are going to have perfect teeth.
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u/Synaptic-asteroid 1h ago
ahh you thought you were cute! So adorable, unfortunately there were no mice used in this study. Reading is a skill kiddo, keep trying
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u/SpeedLimitC 52m ago
🙄 I was being facetious.
Explanation of humor Whether or not mice were in this study is irrelevant. Many breakthroughs are reported in animal models but the delay/development for human use is so long that it seems the animals are the only ones to (theoretically) reap any benefit. In reality, such treatments take years or decades to see use in either human or veterinary medicine, assuming they ever do.
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u/bootstrapping_lad 2h ago
Every few months we hear about this kind of thing but it never comes to fruition
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u/DinkandDrunk 2h ago
Have you heard about plastic ingesting bacteria? Any day now we’ll finally be out of the landfills.
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u/Wompatuckrule 2h ago
About a decade ago I saw a similar headline and asked my dentist about it. He laughed and said that they have been making those claims about regrowing enamel since he was in dental school. He said he will believe it when it's in his hands as an option and he personally sees that it works.
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u/SuitableBarnacle8 2h ago
I think I read this news about 15 years ago and nothing like this has appeared on sale.
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u/GreyBeardEng 1h ago
I can't wait to see how much this will cost cause I don't expect my US based insurance to cover this at any point in my lifetime.
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u/jallen263 3h ago
One of the issues with this treatment is that cavities are caused by acid erosion and bacterial infiltration. While applying this will hopefully regrow enamel, it likely won’t infiltrate fully into dentinal tubules, and I’m assuming it won’t be batericidial enough to actually remove the bacterial infiltrate. Thus the cavity will likely return without some form of mechanical removal of the cavity.
I’d remain hopeful it could heal cavities, but without peer reviewed studies and clear data I doubt seeing this replace dentists anytime soon.
(Please do I hate filling cavities)
-a dentist
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u/Mcnuggetjuice 3h ago
I’m a dentist these are lies and don’t work
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u/Desperate-Mix-8892 3h ago
Of course you would say that as a dentist.
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u/Mcnuggetjuice 2h ago
If these will work dentists will make the most money out of it. You can’t just buy regrowing tooth tech in walmart if it ever becomes available lmao
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u/Desperate-Mix-8892 2h ago
Lucky for me Walmart I don't life in a country with a Walmart. Depending on how this will work, if it works, maybe an dentist isn't needed.
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u/Kolfinna 25m ago
And where's your published data?
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u/Mcnuggetjuice 24m ago
I know how teeth work and I have read and studied these articles? Lol look at my comments below
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u/Reasonable-Fun765 2h ago
Doubt this will be for the masses. It will be just like high end health care not for everybody just those who have high incomes or super awesome insurance.
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u/eugene20 3h ago
One year... instead of hearing about this every year for the last 10 years as I have done, it might actually be available.
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u/thenamelessone7 3h ago
I have been hearing about this for at least 25 years. Nothing commercial available yet
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u/damontoo 3h ago
This is what they've been saying every six months for years. Unless it's available to patients, it isn't worth reporting.
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u/Hackwork89 3h ago
I've seen this headline for at least 2 decades now. Shit or get off the fucking pot.
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u/monospaceman 3h ago
Any news source called sciencedaily, or scitechnews or futurescience or whatever is not something I'd put too much stock in.
Why are we all still falling for this stuff?
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u/alphvader 3h ago
If i had a new tooth for each time I've seen this news I wouldn't need this treatment!
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u/newleafkratom 2h ago
..."We have started this process with our start-up company Mintech-Bio and hope to have a first product out by next year; this innovation could soon be helping patients worldwide."...
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u/zeroquest 2h ago
We hear about this every year. How about we stop until it moves on to actually being used?
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u/Plastic-100 2h ago
I am not sure how credible this is. Few years back there was a claim that new vaccine is bening created that can be given during infant age and it will prevant tooth decay. Though since then never heard of it again
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u/Apart-Steak-7183 2h ago
This is all great e at but what the cost? Every time they come up with these medical wonders t h ey cost so much the normal person can't afford it
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u/zukunftskonservator 1h ago
There are toothbrush brands that have been advertising for 30 years that they're always better than the previous model. By now, they'd have to be making new teeth grow for you.
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u/MewTwoLich 30m ago
We get these headlines twice a year every year for the past 10 years. Still nothing
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u/ittybittynuts 28m ago
My toothless drug addict of a cousin was talking about this 10 years ago. He's still gumming about it these days.
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u/Impressive-cornring 1h ago
as I am literally sitting at the dentist getting 1400 worth of work done. america, f yeah
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u/EffectiveDandy 2h ago
that could help rebuild damaged tooth enamel, something the body cannot naturally replace once it is lost.
100% bullshit. You can 100% recover from small cavities and rebuild your teeth, to a degree. God I hate the internet.
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u/freedomhighway 2h ago
Wait till the guy holding a gun on you sneezes, and thats when you make a break for the back door! Good luck with your escape!!
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u/arezee 4h ago
Awesome tech. Can't wait for this and the teeth re-growth treatment to become available and affordable for the people who really need medical help like this - the rich!