Gingival papilla mesenchymal stromal cells and their potential role in clinical dentistry

Recently, great advances have been made in exploring the clinical potential of oral and dental stem cells. In dentistry, the regeneration of tooth and periodontal tissues is now focusing on the use of oral tissue derived Mesenchymal Stem/stromal Cells (MSCs). Thanks to the minimal invasive procedure, oral soft tissues represent a convenient source of MSCs.We have isolatedMSCs from gingival papilla (GinPa-MSCs) of donors undergoing oral surgery [1]. All the GinPa-MSCs showed a fibroblast-like morphology and a high proliferation rate (DT = 50.4 – 16.1 hours) that allowed us to rapidly collect a large number of cells. GinPa-MSCs displayed a high clonogenic potential (*20%), and expressed on their surface CD73, CD90 and CD105 ( > 99%), CD14 (*32%) and, as expected, they were negative for CD45. GinPa-MSCs were also induced to differentiate towards osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic lineages: an increase in collagen production and extracellular calcifiedmatrix deposition was observed in osteo-induced cells. Preliminary data also indicated that GinPa-MSCs possess a mild chondrogenic potential, while lipid droplets, following adipogenic stimuli, were poorly detectable. GinPa-MSCs primed with high concentration of Paclitaxel were able to uptake and then release the drug into the culture medium. This property was confirmed by the in vitro antitumor activity of their conditioned medium [2] and suggests that, as other stromal cells, also the MSCs from gingival papilla might have clinical application in the future for drug delivery strategies. 1. Sonoyama W, Liu Y. PLoS One. 2006 Dec 20;1:e79. 2. Pessina A, Bonomi A. PLoS One. 2011;6(12):e28321.