Baby tooth Stem Cells found to track down Glioma Brain Cancer

The tooth fairy would be very proud of this new finding. As this recently published article explains, we already knew that stem cells obtained from human exfoliated decidous teeth (SHED) were fairly clever. They’re known for their ability to replicate, their ‘multipurpose-ness’ and their ability to suppress the immune system.

What has been newly discovered is they have the capacity to seek out and migrate toward cancerous glioma cells. This property could prove to be hughly valuable in our fight against this type of cancer, accounting for approximately 20% of all brain tumours.

This study demonstrated invitro (in a petri dish) that the cells migrate toward a glioma -conditioned medium and specific growth factors secreted by malignant gliomas. It also demonstrated invivo (in the body/mice) that the same stem cells migrate from one hemisphere to the other in less than a week to surround a malignant glioma.

The findings indicate that stem cells derived from baby teeth can potentially be applied to track this malignant form of brain tumour. Looking forward to seeing where this research takes us.