Strategies for Oral Mucosal Repair by Engineering 3D Tissues with Pluripotent Stem Cells

Significance: Human-induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) can be differentiated into patient-specific cells with a wide spectrum of cellular phenotypes and offer an alternative source of autologous cells for therapeutic use. Recent studies have shown that iPSC-derived fibroblasts display enhanced cellular functions suggesting that iPSC may eventually become an important source of stem cells for regenerative therapies. Recent Advances: The discovery of approaches to reprogram somatic cells into pluripotent cells opens exciting avenues for their use in personalized, regenerative therapies. The controlled differentiation of functional cell types from iPSC provides a replenishing source of fibroblasts. There is intriguing evidence that iPSC reprogramming and subsequent differentiation to fibroblast lineages may improve cellular functional properties. Augmenting the biological potency of iPSC-derived fibroblasts may enable the development of novel, personalized stem cell therapies to treat oral disease. Critical Issues: Numerous questions need to be addressed before iPSC-derived cells can be used as a practical oral therapy. This will include understanding why iPSC-derived cells are predisposed towards differentiation pathways along lineages related to their cell of origin, screening iPSC-derived cells to ensure their safety and phenotypic stability and developing engineered, three-dimensional tissue models to optimize their function and efficacy for future therapeutic transplantation. Future Directions: Future research will need to address how to develop efficient methods to deliver and integrate iPSC-derived fibroblasts into the oral mucosa. This will require an improved understanding of how to harness their biological potency for regenerative therapies that are specifically targeted to the oral mucosa.