Adult Mesenchymal Stem Cells in Dental Research: A New Approach for Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Many adult tissues contain a population of stem cells that have the ability to regenerate after trauma, disease or aging. Recently, there has been great interest in mesenchymal stem cells and their roles in maintaining the physiological structure of tissues. The studies on stem cells are thought to be very important and, in fact, it has been shown that this cell population can be expanded ex vivo to regenerate tissues not only of the mesenchymal lineage, such as intervertebral disc cartilage, bone and tooth-associated tissues, but also other types of tissues. Several studies have focused on the identification of odontogenic progenitors from oral tissues, and it has been shown that the mesenchymal stem cells obtained from periodontal ligament and dental pulp could have similar morphological and phenotypical features of the bone marrow mesenchymal cells. In fact a population of homogeneous human mesenchymal stem cells derived from periodontal ligament and dental pulp, and proliferating in culture with a well-spread morphology, can be recovered and characterized. Since these cells are considered as candidates for regenerative medicine, the knowledge of the cell differentiation mechanisms is imperative for the development of predictable techniques in implant dentistry, oral surgery and maxillo-facial reconstruction. Thus, future research efforts might be focused on the potential use of this cell population in tissue engineering. Further studies will be carried out to elucidate the molecular mechanisms involved in their maintenance and differentiation in vitro and in vivo.

Tridimensional Response of human Dental Follicular Stem Cells onto a Synthetic Hydroxyapatite Scaffold

“…The cytofluorimetric analysis excludes any presence of hematopoietic progenitors cells in the primary undifferentiated culture. The negative hematopoietic marker CD34, was in accordance with previous findings 10) for culture of cells derived from human periodontal ligament. Furthermore, our cytofluorimetric analysis confirmed that the cells were positive for the mesenchymal marker …”

“…They are also involved in the mineralization process exerting a key role in bone regeneration techniques. [9][10][11] Osteoblasts can be obtained by isolating and culturing undifferentiated mesenchymal stem cells from embriogenic [12][13][14] or post-natal tissues. 15) The first are considered to be pluripotent cells, 16,17) able to differentiate, in vivo and in vitro.…”

From Multipotent Cells to Fully Differentiated Connective Tissue Cells for Regenerative Medicine: Emerging Applications of Mesenchymal Stem Cells

“…and bone marrow stromal cells also known as MSCs which have the capacity to differentiate into connective tissue cells (Pittenger et al, 1999) (see Figure 4). These connective tissues include bone (Arinzeh, 2005;Hong et al, 2006;Noel et al, 2002), fat (Barry and Murphy, 2004;Helder et al, 2007), cartilage (Barry and Murphy, 2004;Caplan, 2007;Noel et al, 2002), intervertebral disc (Richardson et al, 2007;Trubiani et al, 2005;Trubiani et al, 2006), ligament (Sonoyama et al, 2006;Trubiani et al, 2005;Trubiani et al, 2006) and muscle (Barry and Murphy, 2004). Evidence suggests that these cells are also capable of differentiation along myogenic and neurogenic lineages, although these pathways are not normally utilised to demonstrate multipotentiality of isolated MSCs.…”

Involvement of NK Cells against Tumors and Parasites

“…It was recently found that depletion of NK cells from mice using the anti-asialo GM1 antibody did not affect survival when a low dose (1 x 10 4 ) of T. cruzi trypomastigotes was used for infection; however, when a higher dose was used (5 x 10 5 ), NK-depleted mice had compromised survival compared with C57BL/6 mice (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25). Also in vivo and in vitro studies have shown that IL-12-stimulated NK cells can control parasitemia by IFN-γ secretion in the first days of infection with T. cruzi (26)(27)(28)(29).…”