A Smart Use for Wisdom Teeth

Corneal blindness is typically treated with transplants of donor corneas, but donor tissue is scarce and transplant rejections are common.   Fatima Syed-Picard, from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (Pennsylvania, USA), and colleagues obtained dental pulp stem cells from wisdom tooth extractions and turned them into corneal stromal cells (keratocytes), which have the same embryonic origin. The team injected the engineered keratocytes into the corneas of healthy mice, where they integrated without signs of rejection. They also used the cells to develop constructs of corneal stroma akin to natural tissue. Writing that: “human [dental pulp cells] produced corneal stromal extracellular matrix containing human type I collagen and keratocan and did not affect corneal transparency or induce immunological rejection,” the study authors submit that: ‘These findings demonstrate a potential for the clinical application of [dental pulp cells] in cellular or tissue engineering therapies for corneal stromal blindness.”