Shares in grow-your-own-bone biotech Orthocell (ASX:OCC) are up after it proved, once again, that we live in science fiction times.

Today the company said all 10 patients in a dental bone regeneration study had successfully grown enough new bone to stablise their dental implants after four months.

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Orthocell said normally it’d take eight months to get that level of regeneration back after a dental implant.

The stock was up 10 per cent at 48c.

But not quite as far up as that 578 per cent gain in May after it said it could re-grow nerves.

Last year Orthocell first showed that its CelGro product could build a 26 per cent better dental bone after a patient received a two-stage implant with ‘guided bone regeneration’, and promptly launched a marketing study to prove it could do the same for single stage implant procedures.

Guided bone regeneration is done when there isn’t enough bone left to securely anchor a dental to implant.

Orthocell says normally you’d have one surgery to place the implant to allow bone to grow around it, and another in six months to put in the platform on which the prosthetic tooth will sit. The tooth comes a few weeks after that.

In a single stage process the implant and the platform are inserted at the same time and the tooth comes up to six months later.

 

In other biotech news:

Botanix (ASX:BOT) was the other big biotech news this morning and its shares initially popped 15 per cent after it released interim results from the phase 1b psoriasis study. The Australian clinical study showed the BTX 1308 topical cream formulation — made from a synthetic cannabidiol (CDB) — had “significant” anti-inflammatory and immune modulating activity in skin disease. Botanix is working on creams that can deliver a CBD-based medication via the skin for conditions like dermatitis and acne.