Some parents are now choosing to put their kids' baby teeth in a much more valuable place than under their pillow. They're having the baby teeth frozen and stored in case they need it to help treat or cure a serious family medical issue in the future.
"I think that you're doing your child and their future a disservice if you don't at least look into it," says Stephen Hamelburg, DMD referring to Store-A-Tooth.
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The company banks adult stem cells found in children's baby teeth and in wisdom teeth. The company says instead of throwing out your child's baby tooth (or putting it under the pillow), or having your dentist's office discard his or her extracted wisdom teeth, consider storing these precious dental stem cells that could one day be useful for a number of dental or medical applications.
Once in the lab, if the teeth pass the initial inspection, the dental pulp and tissue that contains the stem cells is harvested and processed. The processed cells are equilibrated with a cryoprotectant to stabilize the sample, frozen using controlled-rate freezers, and transferred to liquid nitrogen vapor phase freezers for long-term storage until needed by the healthcare provider.
The initial cost to bank stem cells from one tooth with Store-A-Tooth is $769, which includes the first year of storage. After that, it's $10 a month to keep each tooth cryogenically frozen. Right now there's no medical applications using dental stem cells, but they have been used in human studies. The hope is one day they'll treat spinal cord injuries, MS and a variety of other conditions.
Claudia Vigorito is a Store-A-Tooth customer. Her daughter Gabby, who is now eight years old, had open heart surgery when she was just three weeks old because of a leaky valve. Claudia banked four of Gabby's teeth and she says she hopes there will be enough research done to figure out how to regenerate tissue in the heart and has faith her daughter won't have to endure a lifetime of surgeries.
Company's website: www.store-a-tooth.com