Journal of Dental Research and Practice

Dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) are stem cells present in the dental pulp, which is the soft living tissue within teeth.These cells can be obtained from postnatal teeth, wisdom teeth, and deciduous teeth, providing researchers with a non-invasive method of extracting stem cells.Dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) are stem cells present in the dental pulp, which is the soft living tissue within teeth. They are pluripotent, as they can form embryoid body-like structures (EBs) in vitro and teratoma-like structures that contained tissues derived from all three embryonic germ layers when injected in nude mice.DPSCs can differentiate in vitro into tissues that have similar characteristics to mesoderm, endoderm and ectoderm layers.DPSCs were found to be able to differentiate into adipocytes and neural-like cells.These cells can be obtained from postnatal teeth, wisdom teeth, and deciduous teeth, providing researchers with a non-invasive method of extracting stem cells.[3] As a result, DPSCs have been thought of as an extremely promising source of cells used in endogenous tissue engineering.Studies have shown that the proliferation rate of DPSCs is 30% higher than in other stem cells, such as bone marrow stromal stem cells (BMSSCs).These characteristics of DPSCs are mainly due to the fact that they exhibit elevated amounts of cell cycling molecules, one being cyclin-dependent kinase 6 (CDK6), present in the dental pulp tissue.[5] Additionally, DPSCs have displayed lower immunogenicity than MSCThe human mouth is vulnerable to craniofacial defects, microbial attacks, and traumatic damages.Although preclinical and clinical partial regeneration of dental tissues has shown success, the creation of an entire tooth from DPSCs is not yet possible Distraction osteogenesis (DO) is a method of bone regeneration, commonly used in the surgical repair of large craniofacial defects.The area in which the defect is present is purposely broken in surgery, allowed to heal briefly, and then the bone segments are gradually separated until the area has healed satisfactorily. A study conducted in 2018 by Song et al. found that DPSCs transfected with Sirtuin-1 (SIRT1) in rabbits were more effective in promoting bone formation during DO.SIRT1-modified DPSCs accumulated significantly higher levels of calcium after osteogenic differentiation in vitro, suggesting the potential role of DPSCs in enhancing the efficiency of DO. Stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth (SHED) are similar to DPSCs in the sense that they are both derived from the dental pulp, but SHED are derived from baby teeth, whereas DPSCs are derived from adult teeth. SHED are a population of multipotent stem cells that are easily collected, as deciduous teeth either shed naturally or are physically removed in order to facilitate the proper growth of permanent teeth.These cells can differentiate into osteocytes, adipocytes, odontoblast, and chondrocytes in vitro.Recent work has shown the enhanced proliferative capabilities of SHED when compared with that of dental pulp stem cells