Title:Guiding Lineage Specific Differentiation of SHED for Target Tissue/Organ Regeneration
Volume: 16
Issue: 5
Author(s): Yuanyuan Han, Lili Zhang, Chengfei Zhang and Waruna L. Dissanayaka*
Affiliation:
- Applied Oral Sciences and Community Dental Care, Faculty of Dentistry, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong,China
Keywords:
SHED, multipotency, neurogenic, osteogenic, endothelial cells, tissue engineering, cell differentiation, mesenchymal
stem cells.
Abstract: Stem cells from Human Exfoliated Deciduous teeth (SHED) are considered one of the
most attractive cell sources for tissue engineering due to their easy acquisition with no donor morbidity,
ready availability, ability to self-renew with high proliferation, capacity for multilineage differentiation
and immunomodulatory functions. To date, SHED are able to differentiate into odonto-/
osteoblasts, neuronal cells, endothelial cells, hepatocyte-like cells, chondrocytes, epidermal
cells among many other cell types. Accordingly, SHED possess a promising potential to be used in
the cell-based therapy for various diseases, including reversible pulpitis, orofacial bone defects,
neurodevelopmental disease and ischemic injury. Despite this potential, it has been a concern that
tissue specific stem cells do not differentiate with the same efficacy into all the different lineages
as they may have an inherent tendency to differentiate toward the tissues from which they were
originally derived. Furthermore, stem cell niche comprises of a complex microenvironment where
various cells, soluble signals, extracellular matrix and physical cues interplay to maintain the stemness
of SHED and modulate their differentiation. Therefore, it is of significant importance to identify
the specific microenvironmental cues that regulate lineage specific differentiation of SHED,
which could inspire to develop functional approaches in target tissue regeneration. In this review,
we highlight the recent studies that demonstrated multilineage differentiation capacity of SHED, focusing
on how the microenvironment could be modified using different cues in order to achieve tissue
specific regeneration.
