Your Children’s Baby Teeth May One Day Save Their Life

Many new parents bank umbilical cord shortly after childbirth to save the precious stem cells for potential use later. But another option is gaining in popularity— that is, banking their children’s baby teeth.

Dental stem cell banking companies are processing and storing the stem cells from the dental pulp of baby teeth and those from wisdom teeth for later use in fighting sometimes life-threatening conditions.

In fact, researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) report that stem cells in teeth can be “directed” so they grow into almost any type of human cell, including heart, brain, nerve, cartilage, bone, liver and insulin producing pancreatic beta cells.

Every day researchers are looking into new ways in which these stem cells can eventually be used to treat serious diseases such as Type 1 diabetes, Crohn’s and Parkinson’s Diseases, as well as spinal cord injury, corneal damage, brain injuries, heart disease, periodontal disease and a variety of sports injuries.

How it Works

The dental pulp must be cryopreserved within 48 hours of being harvested and losing its blood supply before the cells begin to deteriorate. That is why dental stem cell banking companies, such as Store-A-Tooth, provide a storage container with a preservation solution that you can have on hand. Once the tooth comes out it is shipped overnight to the lab. Freezing cells in a youthful state preserves their future ability to generate replacement tissue and heal the body.

“The younger teeth have characteristics that seem to give them more potential than other adult stem cells,” says Dr. Peter Verlander with Provia Laboratories. He says storing tooth stem cells could help shape the future of medicine.

"Just like antibiotics revolutionized medicine, I think that we are coming to the point where regenerative technologies will also revolutionize medicine and change our lives."

When compared to the cost of cord blood banking, dental stem cell banking tends to be more affordable and requires as few as one to two teeth depending on the processing methods used to garner millions of stem cells for multiple treatments. So the next time your child loses a tooth, remember – that little pearl could one day save his or her life.