Potential preservation of dental pulp stem cells

Abstract

Dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) as postnatal stem cells have recently been described. They are clonogenic cells, capable for self-renewal with high proliferative potential. Their multilineage potential and plasticity enables their differentiation into different kind of cells, such as osteoblasts, chondrocytes, adipocytes, muscle cells, neural cells, odontoblasts, cementoblasts and ameloblasts. DPSCs are an important human stem cells source, especially in patients who lost their chance for umbilical cord blood isolation and preservation. As these cells became useful for tissue engineering and cell therapy, proper mode of their preservation also became important. The most important points in the cryopreservation and recovery procedure are: growth phase of harvested cells, number of cells, the proper cryopreservative concentration and serum concentration. The cryopreservation process includes the following general components: harvesting of the cells, addition of cryopreservative, the freezing procedure, the thawing procedure and assessment of the viability prior to transplantation. There is no single and perfect cryopreservation method. Further investigations should be regarding capability of DPSCs and their differentiated cells to recover and restart proliferation, differentiation and new tissue production for therapeutic use after cryopreservation.