Dental and Craniofacial Tissue Stem Cells: Sources and Tissue Engineering Applications

Abstract

Current progress in stem cell and tissue engineering technologies is now providing significant underpinning evidence for its future clinical applications. Advances are aimed at clinical translation to enable repair and regeneration of dental and craniofacial tissues, such as teeth, periodontal tissues and salivary glands, which require treatment following disease, trauma or developmental abnormalities. The foundations for current progress come from our knowledge of basic biological processes, in particular growth factor and morphogenic signalling, which occur during the epithelial-mesenchymal interactions which drive tissue development and organogenesis. Convergent with our molecular and cellular understanding is the progress in biomaterials and scaffold development which aim to enable the delivery and differentiation processes necessary for hard and soft tissue regeneration. Adult or postnatal mesenchymal stem cells necessary for these processes can self-renew and generate the appropriate differentiated cell types. The dental and craniofacial tissues provide a rich source of these stem cells for tissue regeneration both locally and throughout the body. These cells can also be used in genetic reprogramming technology to generate induced pluripotent stem cells. This chapter discusses current knowledge relating to the multiple types of dental and craniofacial stem cells, their accessibility and potential applications along with the underpinning evidence which supports their future promise. Furthermore, there still remain challenges to their routine application, such as standardisation of laboratory and clinical protocols, biobanking approaches, provision of Good manufacturing practice (GMP)-compliant environments and the necessary education of the dental team to enable research and clinical application in this area.