Banking of dental stem cells

Tooth banking is recent emerging trend mainly in developed nations around the world. To get ready stem cells matched for the patient requiring treatment is key to the success of cell therapy. If tooth banking system is maturing and proven to be safe and effective, dental professionals would have great opportunities to make their patients aware of the potential of new therapeutic sources and encourage them to store their dental stem cells for future clinical usages. Table 2 shows the list of stem cell banks established for dental banking to our knowledge. One advantage of stem cells from teeth is that there is usually another chance of storing a tooth even if one opportunity is missed, unlike umbilical cord blood stem cells, which is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity at each birth. As a child would lose 20 milk teeth over a period of approximately five years, this length of time assures more opportunities for banking the most viable dental stem cells. In addition, teeth extracted for adults also provide the source of banking. Furthermore, unlike bone marrow and other tissues-derived stem cell collection, these cells can be harvested with minimal controversy, in relatively inexpensive and non-invasive manners.

Interestingly, researchers using induced pluripotent (iPS) technology also proved DPSCs as a perfect cell source for efficiently generating high quality iPS cells, making it suitable for iPS cell banking. Additionally, in their study data out of 107 DPSC lines used for determining HLA types, 2 DPSC lines showed homozygous for all 3 HLA loci. This suggest that banking of iPS cell lines generated from these DPSCs alone can cover approximately 20% of the Japanese population with a perfect match (Tamaoki et al. 2010). Currently our group is undertaking iPS cell generation studies with dental stem cells such as DPSCs. We noticed that the reprogramming of DPSCs into iPSCs is highly efficient with both viral and non-viral methods when compared to other cell sources. To understand the molecular basis of the superior reprogramming efficiency of DPSCs, we are undertaking epigenetic studies and identifying genetic and epigenetic propensities that render them back to the pluripotent state. Thus, our current research in induced pluripotency can further demonstrate the promising potential of DPSC collection as a source of cells for stem cell banking as well as iPS banking for their future use in regenerative medicine.

In summary, main advantages of dental stem cells banking are the following:

1. Provides an autologous cell source for future therapeutic use.

2. Simple and painless isolation procedure.

3. The immature SHED can be the youthful cell source complementary to other stem cells from cord blood.

4. Can be theoretically used for autologous or even heterologous recipients as cells are immune evasive.

5. Provides an ideal source for iPS banking.

6. Not subjected to the same ethical concern as embryonic stem cells.

Table 2. List of banks established for tooth stem cells banking

Company / Stem cell bank name	Countries established	Year	Reference
Three Brackets (Suri Buraketto) established in Hiroshima University	Japan	2005	Rai et al. (2013)
BioEden	USA, UK (serving Europe), Thailand (serving South East Asia)	2006

Read Also

https://us.bioeden.com/

Provia Labs/Store-A-Tooth

USA

2006

http://www.store-a-tooth.com/

DP Dental

Singapore

2006

http://www.dpdental.com.sg/tpages/dental-stem-cells-banking.html

Nagoya University

Japan

2007

Bansal and Jain (2015)

National Dental Pulp Laboratory, a subsidiary of New England Cryogenic Center and sister company to New England Cord Blood Bank

USA

2007

http://www.ndpl.net/

Taipei Medical University in collaboration with Hiroshima University

Taipei

2008

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2008/09/20/2003423724

The Norwegian Tooth Bank (a collaborative project between Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the University of Bergen)

Norway

2008

http://www.fhi.no/eway/default.aspx?pid=240&trg=Main_6664&Main_6664=7165:0:25,7365:1:0:0:::0:0

StemSave

USA

2009

http://www.stemsave.com/

Stemade

India

2009

http://www.stemade.com/

Store Your Cells

India

2010

http://www.storeyourcells.com/

Cordon De Vida

Latin America

2011

http://www.cordondevida.net/

SmileCentre.in

India

2011

http://smilecentre.in/

Future Health Biobank

UK/Switzerland

2012

http://www.futurehealthbiobank.com/

Prolife Biobank

USA

2012

http://www.prolifebiobank.com/

Tooth Bank

USA

2015

http://www.toothbank.com/

*The list of companies is from identifiable English resources as of September 2015. The authors have not confirmed legal compliance of all these banks by their regulatory authorities nor endorsed their services for clinical grade cell production and current therapeutic applications.