Stem cell research

There is growing interest in stem cells due to their ability to develop into different types of cells and their use to treat serious illnesses, offering possibly limitless medical applications. Though they can be harvested from other areas of the body with difficulty, stem cells can also be obtained from the dental pulp in a non-invasive method of collection. The donor teeth should be healthy and can be deciduous, wisdom or adult teeth removed for orthodontic or other diagnostic reasons.

Stem cells are inherently present in the body and are involved in regular repair and replacement of worn out or damaged tissues. A stem cell is an undifferentiated cell characterised by its ability to generate specialised cells by differentiation and to multiply infinitely and identically (self-renewal), especially in culture. Human stem cells are classified into three types according to their origin:

Embryonic. These are totipotent stem cells present in the embryo shortly after fertilisation. The term totipotent means that these cells are the source of all the tissues in our bodies. Under specific controlled conditions, their differentiation can be directed toward a given cell type (nerve cells, muscular cells, blood cells and many more). The removal of such stem cells requires the destruction of the embryo. Research on embryonic stem cells currently has been curtailed, mainly for ethical reasons.