Manipulating Regeneration in Dentistry
As Medical News Today notes, dentists push the boundaries of regenerative medicine just as hard as other researchers. One approach is to manipulate cells already in the body to greater efforts by delivering or altering control signals: "The carrier [GAM, a polymer matrix] serves as a scaffold that holds exogenous genes in situ until endogenous wound-healing cells arrive. Up to 50% of available healing repair cells will get gene transfer. Then the cells in the matrix carrier act as local in vivo bioreactors, producing new gene-coding proteins that augment tissue repair and regeneration. GAM implantation at sites of bone injury is associated with retention and expression of the gene of interest for at least 6 weeks. ... At day 7, we observed that the GAM porous architecture provided scaffolding to promote cell ingrowth. The local granulation tissue fibroblasts, along with capillaries, migrated into the GAM. The osteogenic progenitor cells within the tissue uptook the local plasmid DNA and transiently expressed the gene. This leads to a significant augment in periodontal bony tissue regeneration."
Link: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=75409