dental pulp

Wisdom teeth could hold regenerative medicine answers

by

An interesting article titled “A single-cell atlas of human teeth” written by Pierfrancesco Pagella et al. appears in iScience (vol. 24, no. 102405, May 21, 2021). In the article the researchers analyzed five wisdom teeth that had been extracted to conduct a comprehensive single-cell atlas of the human tooth. The cells studied came from these five wisdom teeth and were extracted by dentists in Zurich. Isolating the cells from these wisdom teeth may have introduced variability between samples and some cells may not have survived the isolation process. Even so, the study found novel insights into how stem cells work which could help answer questions in regenerative medicine. In the study, the researchers at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich used single-cell RNA sequencing to investigate cells present in dental pulp and the periodontium. The researchers compared patterns of … Read more

Monkey Stem Cells Stimulate Brain

by

Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have discovered dental pulp stem cells can stimulate growth and generation of several types of neural cells. They suggest dental pulp stem cells show promise for use in cell therapy and regenerative medicine, particularly therapies associated with the central nervous system. Dental stem cells are adult stem cells, one of the two major divisions of stem cell research. Adult stem cells have the ability to regenerate many different types of cells, promising great therapeutic potential, especially for diseases such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s. Already, dental pulp stem cells have been used for regeneration of dental and craniofacial cells. Yerkes researcher Anthony Chan, DVM, PhD, and his team of researchers placed dental pulp stem cells from the tooth of a rhesus macaque into the hippocampal areas of mice. The dental pulp … Read more