Enamel Regeneration in Making a Bioengineered Tooth

Overall enamel is the hard tissue overlying teeth that is vulnerable to caries, congenital defects, and damage due to trauma. Not only is enamel incapable of self-repair in most species, but it is also subject to attrition. Besides the use of artificial materials to restore enamel, enamel regeneration is a promising approach to repair enamel damage. In order to comprehend the progression and challenges in tissue-engineered enamel, this article elaborates alternative stem cells potential for enamel secretion and expounds fined strategies for enamel regeneration in bioengineered teeth. Consequently, more and more cell types have been induced to differentiate into ameloblasts and to secrete enamel, and an increasing number of reports have emerged to provide various potential approaches to induce cells to secrete enamel based on recombination experiments, artificial bioactive nano-materials, or gene manipulation. Accordingly, it is expected to further project more optimal conditions for enamel formation in bioengineering based on a more thorough knowledge of reciprocal epithelial-mesenchymal interactions, by which the procedures of enamel regeneration are able to be practically recapitulated and widely spread for the potential clinical value of enamel repair.