Tooth Regeneration: Insights from Tooth Development and Spatial-Temporal Control of Bioactive Drug Release

Abstract

Tooth defect and tooth loss are common clinical diseases in stomatology. Compared with the traditional oral restoration treatment, tooth regeneration has unique advantages and is currently the focus of oral biomedical research. It is known that dozens of cytokines/growth factors and other bioactive factors are expressed in a spatial-temporal pattern during tooth development. On the other hand, the technology for spatial-temporal control of drug release has been intensively studied and well developed recently, making control release of these bioactive factors mimicking spatial-temporal pattern more feasible than ever for the purpose of tooth regeneration. This article reviews the research progress on the tooth development and discusses the future of tooth regeneration in the context of spatial-temporal release of developmental factors.

Facilitation of Bone Healing Processes Based on the Developmental Function of Meox2 in Tooth Loss Lesion

“…Particularly, a tooth supporting tissue, periodontium, is originated from dental follicle and to be differentiated into three distinctive structures in the late stage of tooth development, namely, cementum, periodontal ligament, and alveolar bone through complicated signaling networks [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. However, these developmental mechanisms involved in the periodontium differentiation are not properly elucidated and remain insufficient for tissue regeneration in clinical approaches [ 13 ]. Additionally, most of the studies focused on the examination of signaling molecules and their regulations only in the differentiation of periodontal ligament and cementum, but paid less attention to alveolar bone formation and its regeneration [ 14 , 15 ].…”

mTORC1 promotes mineralization via p53 pathway

“…Tooth loss is result of oral diseases as caries and periodontitis, and affects human physical and mental health. 1 To date, the main treatment for tooth loss is replacement with artificial materials, which lack the biological characteristics of natural teeth. Regeneration of bioactive tooth remains a great challenge, and possible strategies require further investigation.…”

Dentin Phosphophoryn-Derived Peptide Promotes Odontoblast Differentiation In Vitro and Dentin Regeneration In Vivo

“…It would be interesting in the future to examine the interaction of dental pulp regeneration compounds with enamel and dentin remineralization to reconstruct the original tooth structure [ 21 , 22 ]. Furthermore, whole-tooth regeneration will eventually be possible by stem cell transplantation, cytokine therapy, cell-sheet technology and so on [ 23 , 24 , 25 ].…”