Dental stem cells are now a hot topic in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine because of their differentiation properties and wide uses. They derive from neural crest cell ectomesenchymal cells which contribute to fat, muscle, cartilage, bone and nerve of the craniofacial area in an embryo. These stem cells are now being investigated for dental tissue replacements including a multitude of periodontal tissues and teeth. Interestingly, they also contain immature neural/glial cell markers so they can differentiate into neural or glial cell tissue. In diseases which are characterized by neural degeneration or damage such as brain/spinal cord injury, stroke, Parkinson's disease or MS the potential of these stem cells is very important. Since a difficult part of damage to the CNS is thought to be the glial scar that forms and prevents the nervous system from regenerating the damaged area, researchers are focusing on a way to form new neural tissue to overcome the glial scar. Clearly, mastering this technology is far-off in the future with how to differentiate these cells and then grow the neural tissue but at least we know the dental pulp stem cell's potential.
Currently a few dentists in Denver are participating in programs that save your extracted teeth for you. StemSave, based on the east coast, pays dentists to send them extracted teeth from which they harvest stem cells from. Since the younger the tooth the better, another company called BioEden has the option for parents to send them their child's tooth saved in milk and they will freeze the cells and bank them for later use. Even if you don't have any baby teeth left to bank, wisdom teeth seem to work just as well so you're in luck if you want to easily bank some of your stem cells (and still have your wisdom teeth).
Ibarretxe G, Crende O, Aurrekoetxea M, Garcia-Murga V,
Etxaniz J, Unda F. 2012. Neural crest stem cells from dental tissues: a new
hope for dental and neural regeneration. Stem cells Int. 2012: 103503. doi:
10.1155/2012/103503
I never knew that stem cells could be harvested from teeth, but it seems much more convenient than blood cord banking because they can be extracted throughout life, as you mentioned. I looked into what researchers have been able to do with these oral stem cells, and found some really interesting uses. Researchers in Tokyo (1) were able to grow a fully functional tooth in a mouse by implanting oral stem cells into the palatine bone were a tooth was lost previously. The tooth seemed to have the correct structure and hardness of a normal tooth. Also, researchers at Columbia University (2) have been developing a scaffold that could be implanted in a human mouth and help guide the formation of teeth from stem cells...the scaffold would just dissolve as the tooth grew into place!
ReplyDelete(1)http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/07/31/0902944106.abstract
(2)http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-05/new-technique-uses-bodys-stem-cells-regenerate-teeth
Naturally, I found this topic both fascinating and incredibly pertinent! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI found in a website dedicated to research being conducted at the College of Dental Medicine at Nova Southeastern University (NSU)that in a nation wide survey, current dentists expect that stem cell regeneration research will "dominate the future of dentistry" and that they believe the technology will be available in the next decade (1). So cool!
I also read an article on a recent publication (3) describing the successful development all of the functional components of a tooth including enamel, dentin, dental pulp, root cementum, periodontal ligament and surrounding bone (2). This is especially interesting because this represents six different tissue types all derived from the same embryonic stem cells.
From what I read, it still seems to be unclear whether adult stem cells can be used with the same effective results as the embryonic stem cells used in this study which could hinder/delay the development of this technology due to the political/religious debate over the use of embryonic stem cells. However, researchers at NSU believe that regeneration of new teeth could be a major swaying point for opponents of the use of embryonic stem cells (1).
(1) http://singularityhub.com/2012/05/10/toothless-no-more-researchers-using-stem-cells-to-grow-new-teeth
(2) http://theconversation.edu.au/building-replacement-teeth-do-we-really-have-the-technology-2397
(3) www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0021531
It is very exciting to find this new way to generate stem cells, however, an article published in nature last month might actually take the crown on how to generating stem cells - using urine. Urine contains some exfoliated renal epithelial cells from the urethra, and thus, these cells can be extracted and induced to become stem cells. This is non-invasive and samples are very easy to get obtain. This Nature article contains the details of the protocol the team of Chinese scientists used to do this.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nature.com/nprot/journal/v7/n12/abs/nprot.2012.115.html?WT.ec_id=NPROT-201212
Dental stem cells as precursors for neural and glial cell growth. While I see stem cells as potential regenerative tissue, the current state fo stem cell therapy seems a little discouraging. It's interesting to me how many human trials are allowed even though we are in the preliminary stages of understanding how to control stem cell growth. It is common for those stem cells to rapidly divide to the point they behave like tumor stem cells. But I like the thought of using dental stem cells. These cells which have already taken embryologic pathways in common with their theoretical target tissues. It seems only logical that teeth could be easily regrown from stem cells derived from your own teeth. The chance of aberrant growth seems much more controllable by our body's own mechanisms, ones that we have primitive understanding of.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is right that stem cells are a hot topic in the tissue engineering. You know that stem cell therapies may not always require creating cells and grafting them back into the body, but stem cells include triggering cells in the body to form new tissue.
ReplyDeleteCosmetic Dental Hospital in Jaipur
While stem cells can be found in most tissues of the body, they are usually buried deep, are few in number and are similar in appearance to surrounding cells. With the discovery of stem cells in teeth, an accessible and available source of stem cells has been identified.
ReplyDeleteFirstly stem cells are immature, unspecialized cells in the body and after some time stem cells are able to grow in to specialized cell by differentiation process. There are available two types of stem cell such as embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells. You know that adult stem find in many organs and tissues in the human body, including the dental pulp contained within teeth.
ReplyDeleteDental Implantologist in Jaipur