Chapter 53 - Tissue Engineered Oral Mucosa

Abstract

Oral mucosa primarily acts as a barrier against the external harmful environments. Loss of its barrier function due to diseases or injury will cause significant dysfunction within the oral cavity. Surgeons are frequently confronted with finding an acceptable source of autologous grafts for reconstruction of oral mucosa defects. Thus, there is a need to overcome these shortcomings of limited supply and donor site morbidity in the current surgical management/reconstruction of oral mucosa defects. Tissue engineering/regenerative medicine is an interdisciplinary field of developmental biology, life sciences, and engineering efforts that attempts to address challenges in the clinical arena. The understanding of the growth and functions of cells, the principles and methods of engineering, and the signals regulating cellular responses drives the fabrication of matrices and the design of tissue assembly to generate tissue-engineered products for in vivo and in vitro applications. Progress has been made over the years in the development of tissue-engineered substitutes that mimic human oral mucosa, either to be used as grafts for the replacement of mucosa defects, or for the in vitro oral mucosa models while tissue engineering of oral mucosa is still in its infancy. An increased understanding of stem cells, scaffolding, and signaling with extracellular matrix interactions will make its future possible. This chapter gives a comprehensive overview of the developments and future prospects of tissue-engineered constructs as oral mucosa substitutes for tissue repair and regeneration.