The new drug that could regrow your lost teeth: Top experts reveal how a simple procedure could end your dental nightmare without having to rely on costly implants or dentures

Scientists have developed a revolutionary drug that could allow adults to grow new teeth.

The treatment, called TRG035, works by blocking a protein that stops new teeth forming. It’s previously been reported that in animal studies, a single dose was enough to grow a new tooth.

Now scientists at Kyoto University Hospital in Japan are to start the first human trial in patients born with tooth agenesis – where some adult teeth fail to develop. It’s hoped the drug will eventually benefit millions of adults who lose teeth to decay, gum disease or injury.

Every tooth begins as a tiny ‘bud’ in the gum, a small clump of cells that acts like a seed from which a new tooth can grow. But in tooth agenesis, faults in key genes disrupt the messages that tell these buds to form and keep growing into teeth. As a result, some never develop properly, while others stop growing before they appear as adult teeth.

One in 20 people is born missing at least one adult tooth due to agenesis. Replacing them is hard in a child – dentures can become loose in a growing mouth, while an implant cannot usually be fitted until the jaw has stopped growing in the late teens. The delay can leave children with gaps that make it harder to chew and speak clearly.

The idea for the new drug came from studying another phenomenon, called supernumerary teeth, where some people naturally grow more than the usual 32 adult teeth.

These ‘extra’ teeth are usually removed because they crowd the mouth or prevent normal teeth from coming through.

In a 2019 study, published in the Journal of Dental Research, the same Kyoto scientists discovered that, in some patients, these extra teeth appeared to have grown from a spare set of tooth buds. Many people carry these, but no teeth grow from them.

The scientists studied CT scans from 78 patients with extra teeth. In 26 cases, the extra tooth appeared to have grown from a spare set of tooth buds, beyond the usual baby and adult teeth.

The team identified a protein, USAG-1, which acts like a brake on the spare buds growing teeth.

The new drug, TRG035, administered as an injection into the arm, releases that brake. It uses a monoclonal antibody, a laboratory-made protein that sticks to USAG-1 and stops it blocking the growth signals a tooth bud needs.

In animal studies, whole new teeth grew from a single dose – but it’s not clear how many doses humans would need.

For the time being, the treatment is aimed at children with a severe form of tooth agenesis called oligodontia, where six or more teeth fail to develop. This affects about two in 1,000 people.

The new trial will involve 24 children at Kyoto University Hospital. If successful, ‘this would be a major advancement in the treatment of rare dental disorders’, says Mary MacDougall, a professor at the faculty of dentistry at the University of British Columbia in Canada and an expert in genetic tooth disorders and tooth formation.

But she adds that ‘forming a human tooth from the initial bud stage through eruption requires an extended period of time’.

The Kyoto scientists also hope the drug could one day help adults who lose teeth through decay, gum disease or injury. That would be harder, because in most adults the bud that made a lost tooth has long since disappeared, leaving nothing for the drug to act on.

Paul Hatton, a professor of biomaterials science at the University of Sheffield, says the approach represents ‘a significant step’, but ‘it may be decades before such a therapy becomes available’.

The researchers hope the TRG035 drug will be available for patients by 2030.