Dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) are stem cells present in the dental pulp, which is the soft living tissue within teeth. They are pluripotent, as they can form embryoid body-like structures (EBs) in vitro and teratoma-like structures that contained tissues derived from all three embryonic germ layers when injected in nude mice.DPSCs can differentiate in vitro into tissues that have similar characteristics to mesoderm, endoderm and ectoderm layers. DPSCs were found to be able to differentiate into adipocytes and neural-like cells. These cells can be obtained from postnatal teeth, wisdom teeth, and deciduous teeth, providing researchers with a non-invasive method of extracting stem cells.As a result, DPSCs have been thought of as an extremely promising source of cells used in endogenous tissue engineering.
Studies have shown that the proliferation rate of DPSCs is 30% higher than in other stem cells, such as bone marrow stromal stem cells (BMSSCs). These characteristics of DPSCs are mainly due to the fact that they exhibit elevated amounts of cell cycling molecules, one being cyclin-dependent kinase 6 (CDK6), present in the dental pulp tissue.[5] Additionally, DPSCs have displayed lower immunogenicity than MSCs.
Atari et al., established a protocol for isolating and identifying the subpopulations of dental pulp pluripotent-like stem cells (DPPSC). These cells are SSEA4+, OCT3/4+, NANOG+, SOX2+, LIN28+, CD13+, CD105+, CD34-, CD45-, CD90+, CD29+, CD73+, STRO1+, and CD146-, and they show genetic stability in vitro based on genomic analysis with a newly described CGH technique.