Bioengineered post-natal recombinant tooth bud models

Abstract

The long-term goal of this study is to devise reliable methods to regenerate full-sized and fully functional biological teeth in humans. In this study, three-dimensional (3D) tissue engineering methods were used to characterize intact postnatal dental tissue recombinant constructs, and dental cell suspension recombinant constructs, as models for bioengineered tooth development. In contrast to studies using mouse embryonic dental tissues and cells, here the odontogenic potential of intact dental tissues and dental cell suspensions harvested from post natal porcine teeth and human third molar wisdom tooth dental pulp were examined. The recombinant 3D tooth constructs were cultured in osteogenic media in vitro for 1 week before subcutaneous transplantation in athymic nude rat hosts for 1 month or 3 months. Subsequent analyses using X-ray, histological and immunohistochemical methods showed that the majority of the recombinant tooth structures formed calcified tissues, including osteodentin, dentin cementum, enamel and morphologically typical tooth crowns composed of dentin and enamel. The demonstrated formation of mineralized dental tissues and tooth crown structures from easily obtained post-natal dental tissues is an important step toward reaching the long-term goal of establishing robust and reliable models for human tooth regeneration. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Developing a biomimetic tooth bud model

“…Distinct and robust DSPP and OC expression was detected in sectioned 3-week and 6-week in vivo implanted constructs, which was indicative of both DM cell-derived odontoblast and osteoblast cell differentiation (Figure 5a–f). This observation supports previous reports from this group (Xu et al ., 2008; Zhang et al ., 2011, 2014), and those of others (Yu et al ., 2007; Dimitrova-Nakov et al ., 2014), which have shown that DM cells exhibit the capacity to develop into osteodentin-producing cells that can express both DSPP and OC.…”

Practical whole-tooth restoration utilizing autologous bioengineered tooth germ transplantation in a postnatal canine model

“…It is anticipated that bioengineering technology will ultimately enable the reconstruction of fully functional organs in vitro through the proper arrangement of epithelial and mesenchymal cell components. Many researchers have attempted to generate bioengineered tooth germ using epithelial and mesenchymal cells from embryonic tooth germ 37 38 or postnatal tooth germ 39 40 41 42 43 44 from various species, including mice, rats and swine. With the goal of precisely replicating the developmental processes that occur in organogenesis, the study of an in vitro three-dimensional cell manipulation method called the bioengineered organ germ method has been recently reported 20 21 22 23 24 .…”

Progress in Bioengineered Whole Tooth Research: from Bench to Dental Patient Chair

“…The knowledge gained from the use of the cells mentioned above has helped to further our understanding and appreciation of how they can be combined and utilized to advance whole tooth bioengineering research. Also, it was recently reported that a scaffold free method can be used to examine the usefulness of various cell sources for the use in tooth regenerative studies [43] •• In addition, a recent study has demonstrated that recombination of post-natal dental epithelial and dental mesenchymal tissues have the ability to form tooth structures, offering an alternative to single cell suspension techniques in whole tooth regeneration [44]. ••…”