Designing Bioactive Scaffolds for Dental Tissue Engineering

Research in dentistry has aggressively moved into regenerative approaches in order to achieve improved clinical outcomes. Tissue engineering has been adopted in dental and craniofacial tissue regeneration with significant success. This article reviews the state of the art in tissue engineering across dentistry, particularly in areas like endodontics, periodontics, and orthodontics. The basic tenets of tissue engineering, i.e., incorporating cells and signaling molecules into a specially designed scaffold, could be applied to regenerate defective dental tissues as well. The main challenge here is that the tissues constituting the tooth and supporting structures have a highly intricate architecture, with each tissue having a specific function. Regeneration of pulp, dentine, periodontal ligament, and alveolar bone has been individually demonstrated; but the collective regrowth of composite tissue structures is still elusive. Ambitious projects like growing the whole tooth and generating complete periodontium are in progress. This article emphasizes the futuristic role of tissue engineering in oral rehabilitation. The article also includes the efforts of an Indian team to design and develop bioactive scaffolds for dental tissue regeneration. Such ventures of effective translation of research become successful only through the combined efforts of material researchers, product designers, clinicians and industry.