I was involved in some research making implants using in part, patients own hair as a support matrix, and I made the ‘mistake’ or misconception that I think may also be here. That being the concept of it being the ‘patients own tissues’, and therefore better. However for these more inert tissue types there is no advantage, and you have the disadvantage of not selecting an inert material that might be have more optimal properties, and doesn’t require harvesting. So in this example, an artifical bone material, if implanted in the same fashion, would respond in the same way. The notion of it coming from a patients own tooth enamel, might give a ‘feel good factor’, but in histological terms, does not have the biological advantage you might think it has.

Interesting! I wonder if it is already technically feasible to culture tooth-like pieces from the patient’s stem cells. Instead of extracting and carving a tooth, it would be cool to grow the tissue in some kind of structured 3D matrix. Patient gets to keep their canine then.

That said… Do you know if tissue grown from a patient’s own stem cells is generally not rejected by the immune system? I am not sure if cells need to differentiate within the body to get labeled by some molecular markers that make them immunocompatible, or if having the same genetic makeup is good enough.

See the crosspost where someone commented a summary of the procedure