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Japanese Scientists Make a Jaw-dropping discovery

Three doctors in Japan have figured out a way to regrow teeth.

“I've been working on this since I was a graduate student.” Toregem Biopharma co-founder Dr. Takahashi told Japanese newspaper The Mainichi.

So he and a team of two others set out on a mission to make this a reality and this was how their Kyoto University-funded research lab - Toregem Biopharma was formed. Over the years, they conducted extensive research into this and eventually had their first breakthrough in 2007. One of their test subjects was a mouse with ‘supernumerary teeth’ (more teeth than usual). During their investigation, they found that a deficiency in a specific protein called USAG-1 was the root cause of this condition in the mouse - their first “aha“ moment.

Then they thought “Hey, if we made a drug that could block this protein from doing its thing in humans, we might be able to help people regrow their teeth”. So they got to work and have been running tests ever since.

Their goal is to help people with anodontia - (simply put) a condition where people don't have natural teeth because they never developed them. So the thing is humans only grow two sets of teeth in their lifetime, (or so we thought) but there is evidence that humans have dormant "buds" for a third set.

According to researched published in the Science Advances journal “A single systemic administration of a neutralizing antibody can generate a whole tooth,”.

They began phase 1 human trials in September with phase 2 to roll out next year in hopes to launch the drug to the public by 2030

Remember Pokemon Go? 👾

Yeah you know - I see you! 2016 was quite the year, wasn’t it? They really had us (well not ‘us‘ - you 🫵 lol 😂) roaming the streets looking for Pokemon for several hours - good ole days.

Niantic - the developer behind it (you thought it was Nintendo right? - yeah me too) announced plans to train a new AI model for navigating the physical world using (you guessed it) scans collected from players of their games, including Pokemon Go and Scanverse.

"Over the past five years, Niantic has focused on building our Visual Positioning System (VPS), which uses a single image from a phone to determine its position and orientation using a 3D map built from people scanning interesting locations in our games and Scaniverse," Niantic wrote in a company blog post.

As crazy as this seems, there is probably a good chance provisions for this sort of use were covered in their terms of service, and it appears that many aren’t surprised. In typical fashion, players flocked to Reddit to share their thoughts on the announcement.

The Playstation Portal just got a HUGE upgrade! 🎮

When rumours of Sony’s new PlayStation Portal were circulating pre-2023, we all assumed it was the modern-day PSP handheld we'd all been waiting for. Only for them to release it later that year to find out it was essentially just a way to remotely mirror your PS5 - so there really wasn’t any point in buying one if you didn’t own a PS5.

However, 4 days ago, Sony announced that PlayStation Portal devices will now support standalone cloud gaming - which means you can now play PS5 games on the device without actually owning a PS5. This update will allow players to game at up to 1080p/60fps, and save games using PlayStation Plus Cloud storage up to 100GB (which will sync with your PS5 if you own one).

There are a few caveats though:

• You will of course need a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription

• PS3 and PS4 games are not supported (at least not yet)

• This is Cloud Streaming - as such the games will not be stored locally on your device and you will need an internet connection to play.

You can read more in their official blog post announcement here

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