| Background and Objective:Stem cells are generally defined as undifferentiated cells capable of both self-renewal and multi-lineage differentiation. According to their origins, these cells can be divided into embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells that exist in various adult tissues. Because the research of ESCs is limited by the ethics, racial concepts and potiential heterogeneous rejection, their application isn't very promising. Much attention has been paid on the postnatal adult stem cells with their advantages of reliable source, plasticity and lack of immunological rejection. Recently, adult stem cells have been found in almost all tissues of the body including bone marrow, cartilages, blood, blood vessels, nerves, muscles, fat, skins, corneas, intestines, livers and pancreas, etc.As the younger one of adult stem cells, dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) were firstly confirmed by Dr Gronthos in 2000. He defined clonogenic, high proliferative cells isolated by enzyme as DPSCs. DPSCs were subsequently found in dental pulps of human exfoliated deciduous teeth, pigs, mice and rats, etc. Many researchers have investigated the properties, localization and expansion of DPSCs in vitro. The discovery of DPSCs may not only provide a new plateau for the mechanism study of the repair and regeneration in damaged dental pulps, but also may bring about a revolution in the development of tooth tissue engineering.Many researchers have previously studied the properties, localization and expansion of DPSCs. The large scale expansion in vitro of seed cells of tooth tissue engineering has been limited by conventional 2-dimentional (2D) culture because of its long-time, slow-culture, large-room and easy pollution. Recently developed 3-dimensional (3D) culture system with both Rotary Cell Culture System (RCCS) and microcarriers was widely applied on the culture of anchorage-dependent cells. This system provided the possibility of large scale expansion of seed cells of tissue engineering in vitro. |
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