The periodontal ligament (PDL) is the connective tissue between tooth root and alveolar bone containing mesenchymal stem cells (MSC). It has been suggested that human periodontal ligament stem cells (hPDLSCs) differentiate into osteo/cementoblast and ligament progenitor cells. The periodontitis is a representative oral disease where the PDL tissue is collapsed, and regeneration of this tissue i...

Tooth development undergoes a series of complex reciprocal interactions between dental epithelium and the underlying mesenchymal cells. Compared with the study in tooth crown formation, little is known about the molecular mechanism underlying the development of tooth roots. In the present study, we conditionally knock out β-catenin gene (Ctnnb1) within developing odontoblasts and cementoblasts ...

Cementum Protein 1 (CEMP1) is a key regulator of cementogenesis. CEMP1 promotes cell attachment, differentiation, deposition rate, composition, and morphology of hydroxyapatite crystals formed by human cementoblastic cells. Its expression is restricted to cementoblasts and progenitor cell subpopulations present in the periodontal ligament. CEMP1 transfection into non-osteogenic cells such as ad...

It has been shown that Emdogain Gel (Emd-Gel) containing enamel matrix proteins promotes biomineralization, such as osteogenesis and cementogenesis, during the regeneration of periodontal tissues. However, the growth factors involved in these activities of Emd-Gel remain unclear. In this study, Emd-Gel was fractionated into 22 sub-fractions by size exclusion chromatography. The osteoinductive f...

Enamel crystallites form in a protein matrix located proximal to the ameloblast cell layer. This unique organic extracellular matrix is constructed from structural protein components biosynthesized and secreted by ameloblasts. To date, three distinct classes of enamel matrix proteins have been cloned. These are the amelogenins, tuftelin, and ameloblastin, with recent data implicating ameloblast...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) represent a promising alternative source of MSCs for effective periodontal regeneration. Scientific evidence has demonstrated that growth/differentiation factor-5 (GDF-5) supports regeneration of periodontal tissues and has a key role in MSC differentiation. The present study investigated the effects of recombinan...

Canonical Wnt signaling is important in tooth development but it is unclear whether it can induce cementogenesis and promote the regeneration of periodontal tissues lost because of disease. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the influence of canonical Wnt signaling enhancers on human periodontal ligament cell (hPDLCs) cementogenic differentiation in vitro and cementum repair in ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Cementum is a mineralized tissue that facilitates the attachment of periodontal ligament to the root and surrounding alveolar bone and plays a key role in the regeneration of periodontal tissues. The molecular mechanisms that regulate the proliferation and differentiation of cementoblasts, however, have not been elucidated to date. Enamel molecules are believed to regul...

Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA) is a rare inherited disorder of the peripheral nervous system resulting from mutations in neurotrophic tyrosine kinase receptor 1 gene (NTRK1), which encodes the high-affinity nerve growth factor receptor TRKA. Here, we investigated the oral and craniofacial manifestations of a Chinese patient affected by autosomal-recessive CIPA and ident...

Osterix (Osx), a transcriptional factor essential for osteogenesis, is also critical for in vivo cellular cementum formation. However, the molecular mechanism by which Osx regulates cementoblasts is largely unknown. In this study, we initially demonstrated that overexpression of Osx in a cementoblast cell line upregulated the expression of markers vital to cementogenesis such as osteopontin (OP...