Craniofacial reconstruction may be a necessary treatment for those who have been affected by trauma, disease, or pathological developmental conditions. The use of stem cell therapy and tissue engineering shows massive potential as a future treatment modality. Currently in the literature, there is a wide variety of published experimental studies utilising the different stem cell types available ...

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells that have the ability of proliferation, regeneration, conversion to differentiated cells and tissue production. Regeneration means that these cell shave the ability of asymmetric division, which one of the resulting cells remains as stem cell while another cell, which is called daughter cell, becomes one cell of germ layer. Stem cells may remain inactive fo...

Adult stem cells are multipotent and can be induced experimentally to differentiate into various cell lineages. Such cells are therefore a key part of achieving the promise of tissue regeneration. The most studied stem cells are those of the hematopoietic and mesenchymal lineages. Recently, mesenchymal stem cells were demonstrated in dental tissues, including dental pulp, periodontal ligament, ...

The ocular surface consists of two distinct types of epithelial cells; conjunctival and corneal. Although anatomically continuous, these epithelia comprise two distinct cell populations. Corneal stem cells are located at the limbus. The microenvironment of the limbus is important in maintaining "stemness" of the stem cells and also acts as a barrier to conjunctival epithelial cells preventing t...

Over the past decade, the dental field has benefited from recent findings in stem cell biology and tissue engineering that led to the elaboration of novel ideas and concepts for the regeneration of dental tissues or entire new teeth. In particular, stem cell-based regenerative approaches are extremely promising since they aim at the full restoration of lost or damaged tissues, ensuring thus the...

Physiological (spontaneous) and reactive (reparative) regenerative processes are fundamental part of life and greatly differ among the different animals and tissues. While spontaneous regeneration naturally occurs upon cell attrition, reparative regeneration occurs as a consequence of tissue damage. Both spontaneous and reparative regeneration play an important role in maintaining the normal eq...

The existence of a postnatal prostate stem cell is supported by several types of evidence. Withdrawal of androgen leads to involution of the gland, but readdition can rapidly stimulate regeneration. Tissue fragments derived from mouse or rat prostatic epithelia from midgestation embryos or adult mice, when combined with tissue fragments from urogenital sinus mesenchyme and grafted under the kid...

In the age of stem cell engineering, it is critical to understand how stem cell activity is regulated during regeneration. Hairs are mini-organs that undergo cyclic regeneration throughout adult life,1 and are an important model for organ regeneration. Hair stem cells located in the follicle bulge2 are regulated by the surrounding micro-environment, or niche3. The activation of such stem cells ...