Need a replacement tooth? Just don't ask where it came from!Okay, I've read about some crazy science in my time. My 'Weird Science Weekly' articles have some great examples. However, I think this one tops them all, and it deserves an article all to itself.

A team of Chinese scientists have used human stem cells, taken from urine, to grow a human tooth inside the kidney of a mouse.

Apparently, growing human tissues inside mouse kidneys is a fairly common practice when you're working with stem cells. William Stanford, a stem cell researcher at the University of Ottawa called it a "developmental biology trick," in a CBC News interview. Also, scientists have known for awhile that urine contains stem cells, and given that we produce urine all the time, it's a much more convenient source than scraping cells them from inside someone's mouth or cutting a piece of their tissue off.

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After 3 weeks of growth, the researchers saw tooth-like structures in the kidneyTo grow the teeth, the Chinese scientists took the urine stem cells from three different donors, grew them into sheets of tissue, then combined that with tissue from the jaw bone of a mouse embryo (that , and implanted it into the kidney of a mouse.

After three weeks of growth, they found tooth-like structures inside the kidney. "The tooth-like structure contained dental pulp, dentin, enamel space, and enamel organ," the researchers wrote, and they confirmed through testing that the teeth were "of human origin".

Furthermore, they found that these 'teeth' had the same strength and hardness as human teeth.

Earlier this year, researchers at King's College in the UK were able to do the same thing, growing teeth inside the kidney of a mouse, but they used cells from the lining of the human gum tissues.

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"Teeth are vital not only for a good smile, but also good health. Yet, we lose teeth regularly due to accidents or diseases," the researchers wrote in their paper, which was published in the latest issue of Cell Regeneration. "An ideal solution to this problem is to regenerate teeth with patients own cells."

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Scientists grow human teeth from urine stem cells

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Aggressive leukaemia puts healthy stem cells to sleep Tuesday 30 July 2013

An aggressive form of leukaemia actually puts healthy stem cells in the bone marrow to sleep, rather than replacing them with cancer cells as was previously thought, reveals a new UK study supported by Cancer Research UK.

This raises the possibility of being able to "reawaken" the sleeping cells, potentially offering an entirely new form of treatment for patients with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

AML is a form of cancer characterised by the rapid growth of abnormal white blood cells that accumulate in the bone marrow and interfere with the production of normal blood cells.

Approximately 2,500 people are diagnosed with the condition in the UK each year, and AML can be fatal within weeks or months if left untreated. Around 2,300 people die each year from the disease.

The research was led by scientists at Queen Mary, University of London, with the support of researchers at Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute.

Professor Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, said: "Although major progress has been made in treating AML over the years, there's still an urgent need for more effective treatments to improve long-term survival.

"This study takes us an important step forwards in our understanding of what's going on in the bone marrow of people with AML, an area that we have not known enough about previously, and the challenge now is to turn this understanding into new treatments for patients."

Under normal circumstances, bone marrow produces special stem cells called 'haematopoietic' stem cells, which mature into adult blood cells, including a form called .

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Aggressive leukaemia puts healthy stem cells to sleep

GUANGZHOU, China, July 30 (UPI) -- Scientists in China report they've grown rudimentary teeth from stem cells taken from an unexpected source -- human urine.

The technique of using stem cells that could be grown into tiny tooth-like structures could be developed into a way of replacing lost teeth, they said.

Researchers in many countries looking for ways of growing new teeth to replace those lost with age and poor dental hygiene are increasingly focusing on stem cells.

Scientists at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health used urine as the starting point, harvesting cells passed from the body and modifying them into stem cells.

The cells, when implanted into animals, began to resemble a tooth, the researchers said.

"The tooth-like structure contained dental pulp, dentin, enamel space and enamel organ," they reported in the Cell Regeneration Journal.

Some stem cell scientists have expressed doubts about using urine as a cell source.

"It is probably one of the worst sources; there are very few cells in the first place and the efficiency of turning them into stem cells is very low," stem cell scientist Chris Mason of University College London told the BBC. "You just wouldn't do it in this way."

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Human urine used as source of stem cells to grow teeth

Chinese scientists develop a method for growing new teeth from stem cells generated from urine.

This model of teeth shows just how many everyone has to potentially lose.

People lose teeth for all sorts of reasons, whether it's through neglect, age, or sports injuries. A team of Chinese scientists from the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health is working on an unusual way to replace those missing chompers.

The researchers derived stem cells from urine as a starting point. The experiment involved combining those stem cells with material from mice. Implanting it back into mice resulted in the growth of what looks like little teeth.

"The tooth-like structure contained dental pulp, dentin, enamel space, and enamel organ," the researchers reported.

If you're a fan of science paper titles, this is a good one: "Generation of tooth-like structures from integration-free human urine induced pluripotent stem cells." The research was published in Cell Regeneration.

The results are rudimentary at this point. The harvested teeth are not as strong as regular teeth, but the scientists are hopeful that the work could one day lead to "the final dream of total regeneration of human teeth for clinical therapy."

It's conceivable people in the future could receive implants that allow them to grow new teeth. There just might be some concern over using urine to get there.

Teeth structures generated from stem cells and mouse materials.

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Peeth: Growing teeth from urine-harvested stem cells