Conservation of dental pulp by reconstruction of dentin

Research Project

Project/Area Number	06671901
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Conservative dentistry
Research Institution	Hokkaido University
Principal Investigator	TAKITA Hiroko Hokkaido Univ., Sch. of Dent., Inst., 歯学部, 教務職員 (30125330)
Project Period (FY)	1994 – 1995
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1995)
Budget Amount *help	¥2,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000) Fiscal Year 1995: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000) Fiscal Year 1994: ¥1,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000)
Keywords	Dental pulp cells / TGF-beta / 細胞分化 / 象牙質 / コラーゲン
Research Abstract	At this year, I investigated whether the dental pulp-derived cells differentiate to cells that could form hard tissue. There are some multi-potent cells in dental pulp even though the number of it was less. I hypothesized that dental pulp cells could form hard tissue, i. e. dentin matrix under the appropriate conditions. In our laboratory, bone marrow cells were utilized to induce hard tissue forming cells, because they contain many multi-potent cells compared with that of dental pulp. Then the result obtained from bone marrow cells might apply to dental pulp cells. Bone marrow cells differentiate to osteoblasts by dexamethasone, or vitamin C and beta-glycerophosphate. Recently it was reported that type I collagen matrix induced the osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow cells. Furthermore the osteogenic differentiation by collagen matrix was enhanced by TGF-beta. Thus dental pulp cells were cultured on collagen matrix which contained TGF-beta. Dental pulp cells expressed alkaline phosphatase activity which is phenotypes of hard tissue forming cells, however, they did not form mineralized tissue under this culture condition. These results indicate that dental pulp cells responded to type I collagen matrix and TGF-beta, and expressed the phenotypes of hard tissue forming cells.