Bringing Teeth Back to Life

wisdom — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 00:48:12 +0000

This post may sound a bit futuristic, but it is just one of the many ways nanotechnology can play a great role in impacting our lives. A study appearing in ACS Nano, describes a nano sized dental firm which could be used for bringing a diseased tooth back to life instead of leaving the tooth dead via a root canal.

Nadia Benkirane-Jessel and colleagues state in the report that root canal procedures help prevent tooth loss in millions of people each year. During a root canal a dentist removes the painful, inflamed pulp, the soft tissue inside the diseased or injured tooth that contains nerves and blood vessels. An area called regenerative endodontics in which the development and delivery of tissues to replace diseased or damaged dental pulp could become the future.

The researchers have developed a multilayered, nano-sized film which contains a substance called alpha melanocyte stimulating hormone that could help regenerate dental pulp. The substance has anti-inflammatory properties and in the lab has been shown to fight inflammation in dental pulp fibroblasts. This has the consequences of being able to help revitalize damaged teeth and reduce the need for a root canal procedure which surely would please many.

Source: Fioretti et al. Nanostructured Assemblies for Dental Application. ACS Nano, 2010; 4 (6): 3277

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Colon Cancer and Inflammation

wisdom — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:53:04 +0000

Researchers led by Dr. Brian Iritani at The University of Washington found that mice that lack the immune inhibitory molecule Smad3 are acutely sensitive to both bacterially-induced inflammation and cancer. I actually study some of the Smad moelecues in Biology classes at University by performing Western blot plots.

Absence of Smad3 inhibits inflammation and increase susceptibility to colon cancer.

To examine whether Smad3 signaling contributes to development of colon cancer, mice deficient in Smad3 were studied. It was found that these mice are acutely sensitive to bacterially-induced inflammation and cancer due to both deficient T regulatory cell function and increased expression of proinflammatory cytokines.

“That the inflammatory response to microorganisms is a key event in these results reveals important ‘tumor-suppressive’ functions for Smad3 in T effector cells, T regulatory cells, and intestinal epithelial cells, all of which may normally limit the development of colon cancer in response to bacterial inflammation,” as stated by the researchers.

Adapted from materials provided by American Journal of Pathology.

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TeethRemoval.com » inflammation

Bringing Teeth Back to Life

Colon Cancer and Inflammation