Dental stem cells have many applications in medicine, dentistry and stem cell biology in general due to their easy accessibility and low morbidity. A common surgical manoeuvre after a tooth extraction is the dental socket curettage which is necessary to clean the alveolus and favour alveolar bone healing. This procedure can cause very low morbidity compared to bone marrow collection procedures and the collected material is normally discarded. In order to investigate if the tissue obtained by dental socket curettage after a tooth extraction was a feasible alternative source to isolate human stem cells, we isolated and characterized two different stem cell populations based on STRO-1 and CD146 expression. We were able to collect and grow cells from dental socket of vital and non-vital teeth. Both populations were proliferative, clonogenic and expressed STRO-1, CD146, CD90, NG2, PDGFR-β, which are markers found in stem cells, presented in vitro multiline-differentiation into osteogenic, chondrogenic, and adipogenic tissue, and in vivo transplanted cells formed mineralized tissue. Interestingly, STRO-1⁺ clonogenic cells presented better multidifferentiation than CD146⁺ cells. Our results showed that mesenchymal stem cells can be isolated from the tiny tissue collected by dental socket curettage after vital and non-vital tooth extraction and suggest that STRO-1 is an important marker to be used to sort cells with multidifferentiation capacity.

中文翻译：

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人类牙槽窝祖细胞/干细胞群体的表征及其多分化潜能

牙科干细胞由于易于获取且发病率低，因此通常在医学，牙科和干细胞生物学中有许多应用。拔牙后常见的外科手术方法是牙槽清宫术，这对于清洁牙槽和促进牙槽骨愈合是必不可少的。与骨髓收集程序相比，此过程可导致非常低的发病率，并且收集到的材料通常被丢弃。为了研究拔牙后通过牙科刮宫术获得的组织是否是分离人干细胞的可行替代来源，我们基于STRO-1和CD146表达分离并鉴定了两个不同的干细胞群体。我们能够从重要和非重要牙齿的牙槽中收集和生长细胞。两种人群都在扩散，在干细胞中发现的克隆形成和表达的STRO-1，CD146，CD90，NG2，PDGFR-β在体外多线分化为成骨，成软骨和成脂组织，在体内移植的细胞形成矿化组织。有趣的是，STRO-1⁺克隆细胞比CD146 ⁺细胞具有更好的多分化能力。我们的结果表明，在拔除活体和非活体拔牙后，可以从通过牙槽刮除术收集的微小组织中分离间充质干细胞，这表明STRO-1是用于分选具有多分化能力的细胞的重要标志。