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Updated: Aug 2, 2025
Establishing Organoids from Human Tooth as a Powerful Tool Toward Mechanistic Research and Regenerative Therapy
Published on: April 13, 2022
Organoids from mouse molar and incisor as new tools to study tooth-specific biology and development
Florian Hermans1, Lara Hemeryck2, Celine Bueds2
1Department of Morphology, Biomedical Research Institute, Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University, 3590 Diepenbeek, Belgium; Laboratory of Tissue Plasticity in Health and Disease, Cluster of Stem Cell and Developmental Biology, Department of Development and Regeneration, KU Leuven (University of Leuven), 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
Abstract:
Organoid models provide powerful tools to study tissue biology and development in a dish. Presently, organoids have not yet been developed from mouse tooth. Here, we established tooth organoids (TOs) from early-postnatal mouse molar and incisor, which are long-term expandable, express dental epithelium stem cell (DESC) markers, and recapitulate key properties of the dental epithelium in a tooth-type-specific manner. TOs display in vitro differentiation capacity toward ameloblast-resembling cells, even more pronounced in assembloids in which dental mesenchymal (pulp) stem cells are combined with the organoid DESCs. Single-cell transcriptomics supports this developmental potential and reveals co-differentiation into junctional epithelium- and odontoblast-/cementoblast-like cells in the assembloids. Finally, TOs survive and show ameloblast-resembling differentiation also in vivo. The developed organoid models provide new tools to study mouse tooth-type-specific biology and development and gain deeper molecular and functional insights that may eventually help to achieve future human biological tooth repair and replacement.
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