The regenerative dentistry: Current approaches and future insights

Regenerative medicine typically aims to promote and improve the healing of tissues and organs of the human body, to restore the physiological architecture and the main functions lost.The combination of several scientific fields, including tissue engineering and cell biology, has led to the development of novel regenerative therapies that claim to obtain a better repairing, regenerating and replacing of tissues and organs damaged by chronic and acute diseases, or by severe traumatic injuries. In this landscape, the mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been widely reported to self-regenerate and differentiate towards different tissues, under specific conditions and stimuli. Nowadays, MSCs are routinely used in autologous transplantation: the use of specific molecular effectors and biomimetic scaffolds populated with such MSCs has shown promising results both in vitro and in vivo experiments aimed to achieve a time-effective tissue reconstruction and a functional regeneration of complex organs.