Dental News - Two separate studies reveal exciting future in tooth bioengineering

Dental Tribune International

Mon. 27. August 2018

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ALEXANDRIA, Va., U.S.: Tooth loss affects many people around the world. While implant treatment is the current standard of care, bioengineering may one day replace it. In the September issue of the Journal of Dental Research, two separate papers on this have been published, one investigated new methods to create highly cellularized bioengineered tooth bud constructs, while the other focused on the use of bone marrow to innervate bioengineered teeth.

The first study, titled “Bioengineered tooth buds exhibit features of natural tooth buds,” was led by Prof. Pamela Yelick from the Department of Orthodontics at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, Boston. Yelick and her colleagues investigated how to create highly cellularized bioengineered tooth buds such that they include features that resemble natural tooth buds, such as the dental epithelial stem cell niche, enamel knot signaling centers, transient amplifying cells and mineralized dental tissue formation.

According to reports, this is the first study to describe the use of postnatal dental cells to create bioengineered tooth buds that exhibit evidence of these features of natural tooth development, pointing to the future of bioengineered tooth buds as a promising, clinically relevant tooth replacement therapy.

The second study, titled “Bone marrow stromal cells promote innervation of bioengineered teeth,” was led by Dr. Sabine Kuchler-Bopp from the Regenerative NanoMedicine unit affiliated with the French national institute of health and medical research and the University of Strasbourg, France. In it, Bopp and her team developed a method by which to use autologous bone marrow mesenchymal cells to innervate bioengineered teeth without treatment that uses an immunosuppressor.

Because innervation of teeth is essential for their function and protection, but does not occur spontaneously after injury, this new method provides that while avoiding multiple side effects associated with immunosuppressors.

Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Dental Research Prof. William V. Giannobile said that the studies pointed to an exciting future for bioengineered teeth. “This cutting-edge research has the potential to advance tooth replacement therapy and the science base to bring such regenerative medicine treatments to improve clinical care.”

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