Generation of tooth-like structures from integration-free human urine induced pluripotent stem cells
1 CAS Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, South China Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 190 Kai Yuan Avenue, Science Park, Guangzhou 510530, P.R.China
2 Department of Regeneration Medicine, School of Pharmaceutical, Jilin University, Changchun, P.R. China
3 Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Studies, School and Hospital of Stomatology, Peking University, Beijing, P.R. China
4 Biodynamic Optical Imaging Center (BIOPIC), Peking University, Beijing, P.R. China
5 The Shenzhen Key Lab of Gene and Antibody Therapy, Center for Biotech & Biomedicine and Division of Life Sciences, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, P.R. China
6 Center for Biomedical Materials and Tissue Engineering, Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, P.R. China
Cell Regeneration 2013, 2:6 doi:10.1186/2045-9769-2-6Published: 30 July 2013
Tooth is vital not only for a good smile, but also good health. Yet, we lose tooth regularly due to accidents or diseases. An ideal solution to this problem is to regenerate tooth with patients’ own cells. Here we describe the generation of tooth-like structures from integration-free human urine induced pluripotent stem cells (ifhU-iPSCs).
We first differentiated ifhU-iPSCs to epithelial sheets, which were then recombined with E14.5 mouse dental mesenchymes. Tooth-like structures were recovered from these recombinants in 3 weeks with success rate up to 30% for 8 different iPSC lines, comparable to H1 hESC. We further detected that ifhU-iPSC derived epithelial sheets differentiated into enamel-secreting ameloblasts in the tooth-like structures, possessing physical properties such as elastic modulus and hardness found in the regular human tooth.
Our results demonstrate that ifhU-iPSCs can be used to regenerate patient specific dental tissues or even tooth for further drug screening or regenerative therapies.