For kids, losing their baby teeth means the chance to earn an easy dollar or two from the tooth fairy. But for parents, those baby teeth could represent promise for the future. You can cryogenically preserve your child’s baby teeth and/or wisdom teeth with a tooth banking company for future medical purposes. It works in a similar way to preserving umbilical cord blood. However, compared to storing stem cells from cord blood, tooth banking offers unique advantages.
Why would I bank my child’s teeth?
You might have a mental image of storing your child’s teeth in a safe deposit box at a bank. Tooth banking isn’t quite the same! It’s actually a high-tech process that takes place in a lab. Tooth Bank, an industry leader, has its own onsite lab for the meticulous extraction of dental stem cells. These dental stem cells are then cryogenically preserved for use in future medical treatments. It’s like having an insurance policy against a future medical problem.
What exactly could dental stem cells treat?
When your baby was born, you likely spent a lot of time thinking about their future. You probably hoped your baby would be born healthy and would stay healthy throughout childhood. Unfortunately, not all families are so lucky. Children and teens can and do develop serious medical conditions, and when they fall ill, parents would do anything to help them. Dental stem cells represent another treatment possibility that can give a child a second chance at having a long, healthy life. And unlike cord blood stem cells, dental stem cells can even be used for treatment when the child reaches adulthood (more on that below).
Dental stem cells have the potential to treat a wide range of medical problems, including the following:
- Type 1 diabetes
- Spinal cord injury
- Corneal damage
- Heart attack
- Stroke
- Parkinson’s and other neurological diseases
- Leukemia and other cancers
- Muscular dystrophy
- Multiple sclerosis
Aren’t stem cells based on pseudoscience?
Actually, stem cell science is considered mainstream. The FDA has already approved some stem cell therapies, with more under clinical investigation. Stem cells have already been used for more than two decades to treat dozens of diseases.
Furthermore, the coming years and decades could prove very exciting for medical breakthroughs based on stem cell therapies as additional scientific studies come to fruition. To date, there have been well over 2,000 clinical trials that have been conducted or are currently underway regarding the application of stem cells for the treatment of health problems. Just imagine what doctors will be able to do with them when your child reaches adulthood.
Why are dental stem cells different from cord blood stem cells?
The main difference is the type of stem cells that are extracted from these mediums. Umbilical cord blood yields hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), whereas teeth yield mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). HSCs are highly specialized cells, which means they are limited in their capabilities. HSCs can generate blood and immune-related cells only. They are effective at treating blood disorders and immune-related conditions, but they cannot be used for any other applications.
In contrast, MSCs are pluripotent. This means they can generate any type of cell the body needs, including heart muscle cells and bone tissue. MSCs can be compared to a master key that can open any lock in the building, whereas HSCs can only open one door.
There is another reason why parents might choose to bank their children’s teeth even if they already opted for cord blood banking. Lots of parents don’t realize that there is a very limited amount of stem cells extracted from umbilical cord blood (a few million HSCs). While this amount is enough to treat a child, it is insufficient to treat an adult. Unlike HSCs, dental stem cells can be endlessly multiplied in a lab to generate the volume needed to treat a person of any age. It’s common for tooth banking companies to charge exorbitant fees to expand dental stem cells for use in an adult. However, if you partner with Tooth Bank to preserve your child’s MSCs, you’ll receive completely free stem cell expansion—a $1,500 value!
So what’s the next step?
It’s easy and hassle-free to bank your child’s teeth. Just get in contact with Tooth Bank and request a collection kit. Then, when your child is ready to lose a baby tooth or have wisdom teeth extracted, schedule a dentist appointment. The dentist will extract the teeth and place them in the collection kit. There will be no cost to have FedEx rush the collection kit to Tooth Bank for processing and cryogenic storage.
Are you ready to begin? For more information, just fill out this short online contact form.
