Synthetic Scaffold/Dental Pulp Stem Cell (DPSC) Tissue Engineering Constructs for Bone Defect Treatment: An Animal Studies Literature Review.

BACKGROUND

Recently a greater interest in tissue engineering for the treatment of large bone defect has been reported. The aim of the present systematic review and meta-analysis was to investigate the effectiveness of dental pulp stem cells and synthetic block complexes for bone defect treatment in preclinical in vivo articles.

METHODS

The electronic database and manual search was conducted on Pubmed, Scopus, and EMBASE. The papers identified were submitted for risk-of-bias assessment and classified according to new bone formation, bone graft characteristics, dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) culture passages and amount of experimental data. The meta-analysis assessment was conducted to assess new bone formation in test sites with DPSCs/synthetic blocks vs. synthetic block alone.

RESULTS

The database search identified a total of 348 papers. After the initial screening, 30 studies were included, according to the different animal models: 19 papers on rats, 3 articles on rabbits, 2 manuscripts on sheep and 4 papers on swine. The meta-analysis evaluation showed a significantly increase in new bone formation in favor of DPSCs/synthetic scaffold complexes, if compared to the control at 4 weeks (Mean Diff: 17.09%, 95% CI: 15.16-18.91%, < 0.01) and at 8 weeks (Mean Diff: 14.86%, 95% CI: 1.82-27.91%, < 0.01) in rats calvaria bone defects.

CONCLUSION

The synthetic scaffolds in association of DPSCs used for the treatment of bone defects showed encouraging results of early new bone formation in preclinical animal studies and could represent a useful resource for regenerative bone augmentation procedures.