Human dental follicle precursor cells of wisdom teeth: isolation and differentiation towards osteoblasts for implants with and without scaffolds

The human dental follicle is a developmental precursor for essential periodontal tissues such as periodontal ligament and root development. These cells can be expected to differentiate into several lineages, since they are derived from mesoderm. Especially the differentiation towards the osteogenic lineage could be interesting for tissue regeneration with or without growing on scaffold biomaterials in autologous transplantation for reconstruction of large bone defects and incorporation of teeth implants. Here we demonstrate a fast and efficient method to isolate stem cells out of the dental follicle of wisdom teeth and their more determined lineage specific commitment into the osteogenic direction. Typical markers confirmed the stem cell character of the isolated and differentiated cells and the successful differentiation has been verified in addition after lineage specific induction using corresponding stainings. In order to evaluate the quality of the cells microbiological investigations were performed and showed that all samples contained microbial species. Pre-treatment of patients with antibiotics reduced the number of microorganisms to a minimum but did not suffice to eliminate all bacteria. The predominantly found species were gram-positive cocci being either catalase-positive and oxidase-negative or catalase- and oxidase-negative. Most microorganisms belonged to the families of Streptococcaceae and Staphylococcaceae. During cultivation of the stem cells, the contamination with microorganisms could be easily suppressed by usage of standard cell culture conditions with penicillin and streptomycin.