Gan L, Liu Y, Cui DX, Pan Y, Wan M. New insight into dental epithelial stem cells: Identification, regulation, and function in tooth homeostasis and repair. World J Stem Cells 2020; 12(11): 1327-1340 [PMID: 33312401 DOI: 10.4252/wjsc.v12.i11.1327]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Mian Wan, DDS, PhD, Academic Fellow, Academic Research, Attending Doctor, Lecturer, Postdoctoral Fellow, State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases & National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases & Department of Cariology and Endodontics, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, No. 14 3rd Section of Renmin South Road, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China. mianwan@scu.edu.cn
Research Domain of This Article
Cell Biology
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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/
World J Stem Cells. Nov 26, 2020; 12(11): 1327-1340 Published online Nov 26, 2020. doi: 10.4252/wjsc.v12.i11.1327
New insight into dental epithelial stem cells: Identification, regulation, and function in tooth homeostasis and repair
Lu Gan, Ying Liu, Di-Xin Cui, Yue Pan, Mian Wan
Lu Gan, Ying Liu, Di-Xin Cui, Yue Pan, State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases & National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases & Department of Pediatric Dentistry, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China
Mian Wan, State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases & National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases & Department of Cariology and Endodontics, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China
Author contributions: Gan L and Liu Y contributed equally to this work; Gan L, Liu Y, and Wan M conceived the idea and designed the work; Gan L, Liu Y, Cui DX, and Pan Y integrated the materials; Gan L and Liu Y wrote the paper; Wan M revised the manuscript critically; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported byNational Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81800929; and Sichuan Science and Technology Program, No. 2019JDRC0096.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests regarding the publication of this paper.
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: Mian Wan, DDS, PhD, Academic Fellow, Academic Research, Attending Doctor, Lecturer, Postdoctoral Fellow, State Key Laboratory of Oral Diseases & National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases & Department of Cariology and Endodontics, West China Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, No. 14 3rd Section of Renmin South Road, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China. mianwan@scu.edu.cn
Received: July 10, 2020 Peer-review started: July 10, 2020 First decision: August 9, 2020 Revised: August 21, 2020 Accepted: September 15, 2020 Article in press: September 15, 2020 Published online: November 26, 2020 Processing time: 138 Days and 16.5 Hours
Abstract
Tooth enamel, a highly mineralized tissue covering the outermost area of teeth, is always damaged by dental caries or trauma. Tooth enamel rarely repairs or renews itself, due to the loss of ameloblasts and dental epithelial stem cells (DESCs) once the tooth erupts. Unlike human teeth, mouse incisors grow continuously due to the presence of DESCs that generate enamel-producing ameloblasts and other supporting dental epithelial lineages. The ready accessibility of mouse DESCs and wide availability of related transgenic mouse lines make mouse incisors an excellent model to examine the identity and heterogeneity of dental epithelial stem/progenitor cells; explore the regulatory mechanisms underlying enamel formation; and help answer the open question regarding the therapeutic development of enamel engineering. In the present review, we update the current understanding about the identification of DESCs in mouse incisors and summarize the regulatory mechanisms of enamel formation driven by DESCs. The roles of DESCs during homeostasis and repair are also discussed, which should improve our knowledge regarding enamel tissue engineering.
Core Tip: In the present review, we update the current understanding about the identification of dental epithelial stem cells (DESCs) in mouse incisors and summarize the regulatory mechanisms of enamel formation driven by DESCs. The roles of DESCs during homeostasis and repair are also discussed, which should improve our knowledge regarding enamel tissue engineering.
