BY FRED TASKER
ftasker@MiamiHerald.com
Naidelys Montoya didn't wait for her son's baby teeth to fall out. She took the boy to an oral surgeon to have two of the loose ones extracted.
``He was a bit scared,'' said Montoya, of Hialeah. ``He's not that brave.''
The dentist shipped the teeth in a temperature-controlled steel container to a lab in Massachusetts, where their stem cells will be spun out, frozen to more than 100 degrees below zero and stored -- in case her son, Raul Estrada, 6, might need them for a future illness.
``I believe in this,'' Montoya said. ``I did as a precaution against things that could happen in the future.''
Montoya and her son have joined a major new medical movement.
In South Florida and around the world, dentists are extracting baby teeth, wisdom teeth and even healthy adult teeth, and researchers are spinning out stem cells that they believe can be used to regrow lost teeth, someday even to repair damaged bones, hearts, pancreases, muscles and brains.
Who knows what the future holds? It may take 20 years or more before stem cells from teeth will be used because of all the testing and federal approvals required.
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