Dental stem cell banking now gives parents the option to store their child’s stem cells from the milk tooth. Dental stem cell banking is complementary to umbilical cord blood banking.
Dental stem cell banking now gives parents the option to store their child’s stem cells from the milk tooth. Dental stem cell banking is complementary to umbilical cord blood banking.
Dental stem cells consist of mesenchymal variety of stem cells.
“The advantage dental stem cells give is possibility of a larger collection. Instead of a 15-minute window post-delivery in case of umbilical cord blood banking, dental stem cells can be acquired from milk tooth or wisdom tooth. This increases the opportunity of collection. If one tooth is rejected, the next tooth can be considered for banking,” said Shailesh Gadre, managing director, Stemade, the company that brought dental stem cell banking to Bangalore.
The best part about dental stem cell banking is that the eligibility is universal. However, stem cells must be collected early and from a fresh source, dental stem cells are best collected from about-to-fall milk teeth from children. In case of adults, wisdom tooth can be used.
“Extraction of stem cells from teeth requires a state-of-the-art laboratory set-up. Stemade also has tie ups with dentists for collection of teeth aseptically for the purpose of banking,” said Gadre. “Stem cells can be extracted from the milk tooth, wisdom tooth or extracted adult tooth. Around 20 to 50 stem cells can be extracted from each tooth and each of this can provide five to 20 million cells,” said Dr Mir Pooya Mozaffary, dentist and maxilifacial surgeon, Dr Pooya’s Healthcare Centre. “Dental stem cells have much greater multiplying power compared to stem cells from bone marrow,” said Dr Pooya.
The cost of preservation of dental stem cells varies from Rs90,000 to Rs1 lakh depending on the total number of years of storage. The procedure of storage is cryo-preservation and it’s the same as that of umbilical cord blood banking, added Gadre.
Shraddha Pujari, a banker and mother of an 11-month-old son, said: “We decided on umbilical cord blood banking for my son in the last minute after I was admitted to the hospital for delivery.
Thankfully, things got organised quickly. However, if we had a dental stem cell banking facility, we need not rush to a decision during labour. Parents will now get a few years for cryo-preservation of stem cells of their child and missing this opportunity during delivery won't be a lifetime hindrance,” she said.
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