Editorial: Tissue regeneration using dental stem cells

Abstract

Editorial on the Research Topic Tissue regeneration using dental stem cells Tissue regeneration is a multidisciplinary field that combines various aspects of biology, medicine, materials science, and engineering. The three main pillars of tissue engineering are: biomimetic biomaterials, growth factors able to drive cell fate, and, most importantly, stem cells. The complex interaction between resident stem cells and the local environment is a multifactorial process, regulated by multiple pathways able to actively influence a wide range of biological processes, from cell division to multilineage differentiation (Santilli et al.).In this landscape, several studies have undoubtedly demonstrated that dental and periodontal tissues contain a significant amount of highly immature mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Dental MSCs (DMSCs) have been found in various dental tissues; moreover, DMSCs have gained growing interest from the scientific community because of their easy accessibility, and thanks to their high strategic plasticity both in dental tissues repair and in regenerating several types of human tissues, including bone, cartilage, muscle, and neural tissue. Despite oral tissues not being the most used niches of MSCs, we should carefully rethink the role of DMSCs in tissue regeneration, as their use may lead to a significant advance of knowledge in regenerative dentistry, impacting on the future treatments of various systemic diseases (Namjoynik et al., 2023;Tatullo et al., 2023).This Research Topic has investigated a wide range of Research Topic, confirming the valuable potentialities of DMSCs in tissue regeneration. Several approaches have been proposed to optimize and enhance the regenerative potential of MSC, such as the use of media conditioned with different growth factors, or cytokines and bioactive molecules (Liu et al., 2022;Ueda et al., 2022). However, these biological strategies alone were deemed not to have reached their potential in some specific clinical conditions (Chouaib et al., 2022); thus, the researchers have added physical factors to improve cell proliferation. Using this premise, studies on various light sources, including LASERs and light-emitting diode (LED), were reviewed, and indicated that photo-biomodulation could be a good aid in those regenerative protocols aimed at stimulating periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs) to repair damaged dental tissues. However, the review revealed that there were a lot of ambiguity in these protocols and could have a conflict of interests as they were funded by the LASER companies (Ponnaiyan et al.).