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Author Spotlight: Enhancing Dental Pulp Research with Improved Mouse Models
Published on: October 27, 2023
Dentin and pulp sense cold stimulus
Masayuki Tokuda1, Shoko Tatsuyama1, Mari Fujisawa1
1Department of Restorative Dentistry and Endodontology, Kagoshima University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, 8-35-1 Sakuragaoka, Kagoshima 890-8544, Japan.
Abstract:
Dentin hypersensitivity is a common symptom, and recent convergent evidences have reported transient receptor potential (TRP) channels in odontoblasts act as mechanical and thermal molecular sensor, which detect stimulation applied on the exposed dentin surface, to drive multiple odontoblastic cellular functions, such as sensory transduction and/or dentin formation. In the present study, we confirmed expression of TRP melastatin subfamily member-8 (TRPM8) channels in primary cultured cells derived from human dental pulp cells (HPCs) and mouse odontoblast-lineage cells (OLCs) as well as in dentin matrix protein-1 (DMP-1) and dentin sialoprotein (DSP) positive acutely isolated rat odontoblasts from dental pulp tissue slice culture by immunohistochemical analyses. In addition, we detected TRPM8 channel expression on HPCs and OLCs by RT-PCR and Western blotting analyses. These results indicated that both odontoblasts and dental pulp cells express TRPM8 channels in rat, mouse and human, and therefore we hypothesize they may contribute as cold sensor in tooth.
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