RESEARCH ARTICLE


DPSCs and SHED in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine



Muhammad Fawwaz Abdullah 1, 2, Kannan Thirumulu Ponnuraj1, 3, Khairani Idah Mokhtar1, *
School of Dental Sciences, Health Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia 16150 Kubang Kerian, Kelantan, Malaysia.
Advanced Medical & Dental Institute (AMDI), Universiti Sains Malaysia, 13200, Penang, Malaysia
Human Genome Centre, School of Medical Sciences, Health Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 16150 Kubang Kerian, Kelantan, Malaysia.

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2013
Volume: 4
First Page: 1
Last Page: 6
Publisher Id: TOSCJ-4-1
DOI: 10.2174/1876893801304010001

Article History:

Received Date: 20/12/2012
Revision Received Date: 22/01/2013
Acceptance Date: 22/01/2013
Electronic publication date: 22/02/2013
Collection year: 2013

Mokhtar et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the School of Dental Sciences, Health Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia 16150 Kubang Kerian, Kelantan, Malaysia. E-mail: khairani@kk.usm.my


Abstract

Dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) from permanent teeth and stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth (SHED) have attracted tremendous interest recently by playing a major role in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. However, since stem cell technology is still in its infancy, interdisciplinary cooperation between medicine, basic biological research, nanotechnology and materials science is needed to achieve successful clinical applications. Similar to mesenchymal stem cells, DPSCs and SHED can undergo self-renewal and have multipotent differentiation ability, but unlike other sources of stem cells such as embryonic stem cells, which involves the destruction of human embryo, DPSCs and SHED have limited ethical concerns as they are readily and easily accessible, non-invasive and disposed off naturally. Not only DPSCs and SHED can be used for cell based therapies and bio-artificial tissue constructs but also made to differentiate into other cell types. Here, we discuss on definitions, opportunities, advantages and limitations of DPSCs and SHED in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Keywords: Dental stem cells, DPSCs, regenerative medicine, SHED, tissue engineering .