Dental Stem Cells and Tooth Banking for Regenerative Medicine

Stem cell (SC) therapy has a promising future for tissue regenerative medicine. However, because SC technology is still in its infancy, interdisciplinary cooperation is needed to achieve successful clinical applications. Dental SCs have drawn attention in recent years because of their accessibility, plasticity, and high proliferative ability. Several types of dental SCs have been identified, including dental pulp SCs from adult human dental pulp, SCs from human primary exfoliated deciduous teeth, periodontal ligament SCs, and dental follicle SCs from human third molars. Similar to mesenchymal SCs, these dental SCs can undergo self-renewal and have multipotent differentiation ability, but do not have the ethical issues associated with other sources of SCs. Therefore, appropriate preservation procedures for dental SCs and teeth are now needed. Here, we discuss the opportunities for tooth-banking (as it is now clinically feasible and commercially available), the advantages and limitations of current cryopreservation techniques for dental SCs/teeth or tissues, and the current status of tooth banks.