Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
16
Dental Pulp Stem Cells and
Tissue Engineering Strategies for
Clinical Application on Odontoiatric Field
Zavan Barbara et al.
*
University of Padova
Italy
1. Introduction
Recent advances in tissue engineering have drawn scientists to test the possibility of tooth
engineering and regeneration. Tooth regeneration is normally referred to as the regeneration
of the entire tooth or root that can be integrated into the jaw bone. This technology is still at
its infancy and when it matures, it may be used to restore missing teeth and replace artificial
dental implants when the tooth is damaged but still in a reparable condition, regeneration of
parts of the tooth structure can prevent or delay the loss of the whole tooth. To engineer and
regenerate a whole tooth, the cell source, tissue engineering strategies and specific scaffolds
needed to be correct choose.
Indeed, for example, to repair partly lost tooth tissues such as PDL, dentin, and pulp, one
or two particular types of dental stem cells may be sufficient to fulfill the need.
In light of
such considerations, aim of the present chapter is to define the main strategies to isolate
dental pulp stem cells, their characterisation and differentiation, tissue enngineering
strategies and clinical applications for the creation of artificial tissue useful in odontoiatric
field.
2. Dental pulp stem cells
Dental pulp is a well known tissue enrich of adult mesenchymal stem cells: Dental Pulp
Stem cells (DPSc). These adult stem cells play an important role in regenerative medicine
both for oral and non oral pathoses thanks to their biological properties such as
multipotency, high proliferation rates and accessibility (Yamada et al., 2010).
Beyond natural capacity of response to injury, dental pulp stem cells are attractive for their
potential to differentiate, in vitro, into several cell types including odontoblasts, neural
progenitors, chondrocytes, endothelocytes, adipocytes, smooth muscle cells and osteoblasts.
The potential application of dental pulp stem cells and tissue engineering in dentistry are
discussed in the present chapter (Sloan & Waddington, 2009).
