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World J Stem Cells. May 26, 2021; 13(5): 342-365
Published online May 26, 2021. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v13.i5.342
Multidifferentiation potential of dental-derived stem cells
Jing-Yao Yin, Xing-Hong Luo, Wei-Qing Feng, Sheng-Hong Miao, Ting-Ting Ning, Qian Lei, Tao Jiang, Dan-Dan Ma
Jing-Yao Yin, Xing-Hong Luo, Wei-Qing Feng, Sheng-Hong Miao, Qian Lei, Tao Jiang, Department of Stomatology, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, Guangdong Province, China
Ting-Ting Ning, Dan-Dan Ma, Department of Endodontics, Stomatological Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510280, Guangdong Province, China
Author contributions: Yin JY prepared the initial draft, tables and figures; All authors wrote parts of the manuscript, read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81970930.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Dan-Dan Ma, PhD, Professor, Department of Endodontics, Stomatological Hospital, Southern Medical University, No. 366 Jiangnan Avenue South, Guangzhou 510280, Guangdong Province, China. mdd@smu.edu.cn
Received: December 21, 2020
Peer-review started: December 21, 2020
First decision: February 14, 2021
Revised: March 10, 2021
Accepted: April 4, 2021
Article in press: April 4, 2021
Published online: May 26, 2021
Processing time: 156 Days and 1.4 Hours
Abstract

Tooth-related diseases and tooth loss are widespread and are a major public health issue. The loss of teeth can affect chewing, speech, appearance and even psychology. Therefore, the science of tooth regeneration has emerged, and attention has focused on tooth regeneration based on the principles of tooth development and stem cells combined with tissue engineering technology. As undifferentiated stem cells in normal tooth tissues, dental mesenchymal stem cells (DMSCs), which are a desirable source of autologous stem cells, play a significant role in tooth regeneration. Researchers hope to reconstruct the complete tooth tissues with normal functions and vascularization by utilizing the odontogenic differentiation potential of DMSCs. Moreover, DMSCs also have the ability to differentiate towards cells of other tissue types due to their multipotency. This review focuses on the multipotential capacity of DMSCs to differentiate into various tissues, such as bone, cartilage, tendon, vessels, neural tissues, muscle-like tissues, hepatic-like tissues, eye tissues and glands and the influence of various regulatory factors, such as non-coding RNAs, signaling pathways, inflammation, aging and exosomes, on the odontogenic/osteogenic differentiation of DMSCs in tooth regeneration. The application of DMSCs in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering will be improved if the differentiation characteristics of DMSCs can be fully utilized, and the factors that regulate their differentiation can be well controlled.

Keywords: Dental mesenchymal stem cells; Regenerative medicine; Tissue engineering; Multipotency; Odontogenic differentiation; Osteogenic differentiation

Core Tip: Dental mesenchymal stem cells have been widely used in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine due to their multipotential differentiation ability. We herein discuss the multipotency of dental mesenchymal stem cells and some related factors influencing the odontogenic/osteogenic differentiation, which provide guidance for fully utilizing the multipotency of dental mesenchymal stem cells.