In a previous article, we covered the Fennell family and how their story of storing dental stem cells from their 15-year old sons’ wisdom tooth got picked up by WNDU news and presented as a video article – well the coverage of this story has spread to several different news outlets, one of which being an article on WINK news.
Once again, Janette and Grieg Fennell are featured as conscientious parents who eat healthily and live a clean lifestyle. However they were intrigued enough by the potential benefits of storing dental stem cells, explained to them by their dentist when their son was having his wisdom tooth extracted, to take a step further and harvest the stem cells for possible use in the future health of their son.
Because dentists extract teeth before they fall out, the tooth can be preserved in a special solution, packed in ice, and shipped to a facility where the teeth – which are a good source of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) – are processed and stem cells are stored. MSC have great potential for future use and can be used in regenerative medicine to form nerves, muscles, and bone.
Provia and their dental stem cell storage system Store-A-Tooth are project partners of Grace Century, who’s President and Director of Research Scott Wolf said “while it has been known for some time that MSC can be harvested from umbilical cord blood, this must be done at birth. Store-A-Tooth provides the opportunity to harvest stem cells right into a child’s teenage years.”
