Dental tissues as adult stem cell source

dental follicle derived cells showed enhanced osteoblastspecific genes and ectopic bone formation after in vivo transplantation, indicating dental follicle is the powerful stem cell source in bone tissue regeneration. Dental pulp is expected to harbor the pools of undifferentiated precursor cells for nerve or vascular tissue regeneration. The most powerful advantage of dental tissues as stem cells source is that primitive and multipotent tissues could be obtained around age 20, a later age compared to that of other stem cell sources, such as umbilical cord blood or matrix. If these dental tissues are preserved for long time without losing their stemness, they could be used as autologous stem cell source for demanding applications in regenerative medicine. A recent study reported the successful isolation of stem cells from long-term cryopreserved dental pulp tissues of deciduous teeth using a cryoprotectant, 90% fetal bovine serum (FBS) and 10% dimethyl sulfoxide. However, FBS is xenogenic material for human tissue and cells and may alter tissue’s properties, and not suitable for long-term preservation of human tissues. Interestingly, an efficient and safe dental tissue cryopreservation method using sucrose and ethylene glycol has been developed, and further analyses are being proceeded for its clinical application (data not published). In near future, the dental tissues, follicle, pulp and root papilla, of extracted wisdom teeth could be cryopreserved for later use as autologous stem cells sources.