Dental stem cells and tooth regeneration

Abstract

Dental stem cells are a minor population of mesenchymal stem cells existing in specialized dental tissues, such as dental pulp, periodontium, apical papilla, dental follicle and so forth. Standard methods have been established to isolate and identify these stem cells. Due to their differentiation potential, these mesenchymal stem cells are promising for tooth repair. Dental stem cells have been emerging to regenerated teeth and periodontal tissues, ascribe to their self-renewal, multipotency and tissue specific differentiation potential. Therefore, dental stem cells based regeneration medicine highlights a promising access to repair damaged dental tissues or generate new teeth. In this review, we provide an overview of human dental stem cells including isolation and identification, involved pathways and outcomes of regenerative researches. A number of basic researches, preclinical studies and clinical trials have investigated that dental stem cells efficiently improve formation of dental specialized structure and healing of periodontal diseases, suggesting a great feasibility and prospect of these approaches in translational medicine of dental regeneration.