Provia Store-A-Tooth

LEXINGTON, Massachusetts--Provia Laboratories plans to exhibit during the 2012 Chicago Midwinter Meeting at Booth # 3346 to showcase the Store-A-Tooth dental stem cell preservation service. The Store-A-ToothTM service enables families to save their adult stem cells--from baby teeth ready to fall out, teeth pulled for orthodontic reasons, and wisdom teeth being extracted. Dental professionals play a role in making patients aware of this option, giving families the choice to safely and securely store stem cells convenienly so that they can take advantage of future therapies in regenerative medicine and dentistry.The company partners with dental offices to make it easy to educate and inform patients about the option to preserve a family’s dental stem cells. For those interested in the service, Provia works with the dental team to provide high-quality tooth collection, and arranges for the sample to be sent overnight to the lab where the stem cells are harvested, tested, and cryopreserved for future potential use. “New stem cell therapies are going to change medicine as we know it, and dentists will play a leading role in enabling this transformation,” stated Howard Greenman, Provia Labs CEO. “There’s been a lot of media buzz about stem cell research in general, but most people are unaware that a very potent and plentiful source of viable stem cells exists in the dental pulp of healthy teeth.”Dental stem cells have already been used successfully in people to regenerate alveolar jaw bone and to treat periodontal disease. “One of the first routine applications in the oral cavity for the use of mesenchymal stem cells from teeth will be to promote bone growth around implants so they integrate more quickly, similar to how cellular bone matrix products are used today,” said Dr. Nicholas Perrotta, DMD, who started providing the Store-A-Tooth service in 2011. Added Peter Verlander, PhD, chief scientific officer for Provia Labs: “In addition to potential applications in regenerative dentistry, dental stem cell research may lead to new treatments for a wide range of medical conditions, including type 1 diabetes, stroke, cardiovascular disease, spinal cord injuries, and Parkinson’s disease, to name a few. Dental stem cell collection and preservation gives parents the peace of mind that they are now equipped to take advantage of the breakthroughs in stem cell therapies that will arise from the research community.” According to Greenman: “Store-A-Tooth is less expensive than collecting stem cells from umbilical cord blood. In fact, we hear from many of our customers that they are thankful to have this opportunity to store their stem cells, especially if they missed the chance to save cord blood. Our mission is to make stem cell banking accessible to the millions of children losing teeth every year.” There are no fees or costs to dentists who wish to become an authorized Store-A-Tooth provider. In fact, dentists can generate incremental revenue for assisting with tooth collection. Provia Labs supplies participating practices with patient education materials, practice tools, and dedicated support. Training is simple, and there is minimal impact to existing workflow.Dental professionals share Store-A-Tooth educational materials with patients, who enroll directly with Provia Labs. The day of the appointment, the dentist simply places the extracted tooth into the Store-A-Tooth collection kit, which includes a proven transport device called Save-A-Tooth. Regenerative medicine: the future of organ donation?In use by thousands of dentists for more than 20 years, the Save-A-Tooth is an FDA-approved and ADA-accepted device for transporting avulsed teeth for reimplantation. The Store-A-Tooth collection kit is shipped overnight to the Provia Laboratories facility, where the stem cells are processed and stored. The Store-A-Tooth service is available to dental offices throughout the United States and internationally. For more information, visit www.store-a-tooth.com or call (877) 867-5753.To comment on this product, go to community.pennwelldentalgroup.com/.