Dental Stem Cells vs. Other Mesenchymal Stem Cells: Their Pluripotency and Role in Regenerative Medicine

Abstract

The field of regenerative medicine has been growing rapidly by identification of various mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) sources and development of cell-based technologies. To increase success rate in MSC therapy, determining the optimum cell source having satisfied differentiation potential for a particular restoration approach is the most crucial step. Although each MSC type has a specific capacity for regenerative cell therapies under certain conditions, dental stem cells (DSCs) are claimed to be superior to many others due to having easy isolation procedure, plasticity and multipotency. DSCs, with their neural crest origin, are a valuable option for regenerative medicine as they express remarkable levels of pluripotency markers, have the ability to differentiate into several cell lineages and lack of ethical considerations associated with embryonic stem cells. Although their adipogenic and chondrogenic transformation ability relatively remain weak compared to other widely studied MSCs, they display superior odontogenic, osteogenic and neurogenic differentiation potentials. Taking numerous advantageous of DSCs into consideration, additional attempts such as external growth factor application and gene modifications might cover imperfections of DSCs for specific tissue regeneration applications. Although various reports have compared DSCs with other famous MSCs, there is not any systemic study to elucidate advantages and limitations of DSCs in tissue regeneration applications. Before realizing use of DSCs in clinics, additional works are highly warranted to elucidate full-potential, and molecular mechanisms regulating stem cell maintenance and differentiation.