Ehsan Farjood
Tooth loss as one of the most debilitating defects both functionally and esthetically, affects over 276 million people worldwide. Drawbacks of available treatment options such as Fixed Partial Dentures (FPDs), Removable Partial Dentures (RPDs), and dental implants indicate a desire to a more promising approach to deal with edentulism.
From the pegs-shaped bamboo sticks carved by ancient Chinese 4000 years ago, to the most recent dental implants, there was an ongoing desire to replace the missing teeth with something similar to the tooth. Therefore, regeneration of tooth in morphological and functional form could be the only perfect answer to lost tooth replacement. Recent advances in developmental biology, stem cell biology, materials science, and tissue engineering have brought an unprecedented hope to bioengineer the whole tooth as a novel treatment.
In this lecture, we are going to discuss the most recent accomplishments of whole tooth bioengineering and evaluate the challenges and limitations that should be addressed before introducing the bioengineered teeth to the future dental clinics.
