Eric Litman

New in Claude Code: agent view. One list of all your sessions, available today as a research preview.

We’re deeply committed to reforming our IND/Phase 1 process. We must retain our position as the world leader in biotech.

Your jaw has the parts to grow a third set of teeth. They never finished forming. A protein in your body kept them locked away since before you were born. Japan's new drug blocks that protein. The lock comes off. Those buried tooth parts wake up and grow into real teeth. In 2018, this worked on mice. It worked again on ferrets. The team picked ferrets because, like humans, ferrets grow two sets of teeth in their lifetime. Rats and mice don't. Human trials started at Kyoto University in late 2024. Thirty men, aged 30 to 64, each with at least one missing molar, are receiving injections. This first round only tests safety. Whether it grows teeth in real people is still unknown. That data is years away. The first patients to be treated will be young children, ages 2 to 7, born missing 6 or more permanent teeth. This is a rare birth defect affecting about 1 in 1,000 people. Trials in those kids run through 2027. The next round through 2029. Earliest public sale: 2030. For adults losing teeth to cavities, accidents, or old age, the wait is longer. Toregem itself admits dentures and implants will stay the standard answer for years. A single implant in America costs $3,000 to $6,000, and the global implant market was worth $5.5 billion in 2025. So the headline oversells things. Nobody is replacing implants this decade. But the Japanese dentist behind the drug spent nearly 30 years working on this. He found an ancient genetic switch our bodies stopped flipping long ago, and built a way to flip it back on.