Leveraging Advancements in Tissue Engineering for Bioprinting Dental Tissues

Environmental bioprinting in forensic pathology: applications in DNA preservation and forensic identification

Bioprinting is an advanced technology that enables the fabrication of complex three-dimensional (3D) biological structures by layering bio-inks embedded with cells to replicate natural tissues. Environmental bioprinting, an emerging field at the intersection of biotechnology and forensic science, presents new possibilities for forensic pathology by recreating biological tissues under specific environmental conditions. This narrative review explores how environmental bioprinting can enhance forensic investigations by generating tissue models that mimic real-world environmental influences such as temperature fluctuations, chemical exposure, and decomposition processes. Special attention is given to the resilience of dental pulp DNA, which remains intact under extreme environmental conditions, making it a crucial element in forensic identification. The review also examines how early childhood diet and dental structures contribute to forensic profiling by providing insights into an individual's nutritional background and regional influences. By leveraging bioprinting technology, forensic scientists can improve the accuracy of tissue reconstruction, DNA preservation, and forensic biometrics, especially in challenging cases involving mass disasters and unidentified mortal remains. This narrative review synthesizes existing literature on environmental bioprinting's forensic applications, emphasizing its potential to revolutionize forensic pathology by offering a controlled, replicable model for biological tissue analysis.

The Applications of 3D-Printing Technology in Prosthodontics: A Review of the Current Literature

Prosthodontics has become increasingly popular because of its cosmetic attractiveness. 3D printing has revolutionized prosthodontics, enabling the creation of high-quality dental prostheses. It creates detailed restorations, such as crowns, bridges, implant-supported frameworks, surgical templates, dentures, and orthodontic models. In addition, it saves production time but faces challenges such as elevated expenses and the requirement for innovative materials and technologies. This review gives insights into the uses of 3D printing in prosthodontics, presenting how it has significantly changed clinical practices. This article discusses different materials and techniques. Additionally, it showcases the capacity of 3D printing to improve prosthodontic practice and proposes prospects for future investigation.

Advancing Dentistry through Bioprinting: Personalization of Oral Tissues

Despite significant advancements in dental tissue restoration and the use of prostheses for addressing tooth loss, the prevailing clinical approaches remain somewhat inadequate for replicating native dental tissue characteristics. The emergence of three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting offers a promising innovation within the fields of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. This technology offers notable precision and efficiency, thereby introducing a fresh avenue for tissue regeneration. Unlike the traditional framework encompassing scaffolds, cells, and signaling factors, 3D bioprinting constitutes a contemporary addition to the arsenal of tissue engineering tools. The ongoing shift from conventional dentistry to a more personalized paradigm, principally under the guidance of bioprinting, is poised to exert a significant influence in the foreseeable future. This systematic review undertakes the task of aggregating and analyzing insights related to the application of bioprinting in the context of regenerative dentistry. Adhering to PRISMA guidelines, an exhaustive literature survey spanning the years 2019 to 2023 was performed across prominent databases including PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar, and ScienceDirect. The landscape of regenerative dentistry has ushered in novel prospects for dentoalveolar treatments and personalized interventions. This review expounds on contemporary accomplishments and avenues for the regeneration of pulp-dentin, bone, periodontal tissues, and gingival tissues. The progressive strides achieved in the realm of bioprinting hold the potential to not only enhance the quality of life but also to catalyze transformative shifts within the domains of medical and dental practices.

A propitious role of marine sourced polysaccharides: Drug delivery and biomedical applications

Numerous compounds, with extensive applications in biomedical and biotechnological fields, are present in the oceans, which serve as a prime renewable source of natural substances, further promoting the development of novel medical systems and devices. Polysaccharides are present in the marine ecosystem in abundance, promoting minimal extraction costs, in addition to their solubility in extraction media, and an aqueous solvent, along with their interactions with biological compounds. Certain algae-derived polysaccharides include fucoidan, alginate, and carrageenan, while animal-derived polysaccharides comprise hyaluronan, chitosan and many others. Furthermore, these compounds can be modified to facilitate their processing into multiple shapes and sizes, as well as exhibit response dependence to external conditions like temperature and pH. All these properties have promoted the use of these biomaterials as raw materials for the development of drug delivery carrier systems (hydrogels, particles, capsules). The present review enlightens marine polysaccharides providing its sources, structures, biological properties, and its biomedical applications. In addition to this, their role as nanomaterials is also portrayed by the authors, along with the methods employed to develop them and associated biological and physicochemical properties designed to develop suitable drug delivery systems.

Bioprinting and biomaterials for dental alveolar tissue regeneration

Three dimensional (3D) bioprinting is a powerful tool, that was recently applied to tissue engineering. This technique allows the precise deposition of cells encapsulated in supportive bioinks to fabricate complex scaffolds, which are used to repair targeted tissues. Here, we review the recent developments in the application of 3D bioprinting to dental tissue engineering. These tissues, including teeth, periodontal ligament, alveolar bones, and dental pulp, present cell types and mechanical properties with great heterogeneity, which is challenging to reproduce in vitro. After highlighting the different bioprinting methods used in regenerative dentistry, we reviewed the great variety of bioink formulations and their effects on cells, which have been established to support the development of these tissues. We discussed the different advances achieved in the fabrication of each dental tissue to provide an overview of the current state of the methods. We conclude with the remaining challenges and future needs.

Bioprinting of alginate-carboxymethyl chitosan scaffolds for enamel tissue engineeringin vitro

Tissue engineering offers a great potential in regenerative dentistry and to this end, three dimensional (3D) bioprinting has been emerging nowadays to enable the incorporation of living cells into the biomaterials (such a mixture is referred as a bioink in the literature) to create scaffolds. However, the bioinks available for scaffold bioprinting are limited, particularly for dental tissue engineering, due to the complicated, yet compromised, printability, mechanical and biological properties simultaneously imposed on the bioinks. This paper presents our study on the development of a novel bioink from carboxymethyl chitosan (CMC) and alginate (Alg) for bioprinting scaffolds for enamel tissue regeneration. CMC was used due to its antibacterial ability and superior cell interaction properties, while Alg was added to enhance the printability and mechanical properties as well as to regulate the degradation rate. The bioinks with three mixture ratios of Alg and CMC (2-4, 3-3 and 4-2) were prepared, and then printed into the calcium chloride crosslinker solution (100 mM) to form a 3D structure of scaffolds. The printed scaffolds were characterized in terms of structural, swelling, degradation, and mechanical properties, followed by theirin vitrocharacterization for enamel tissue regeneration. The results showed that the bioinks with higher concentrations of Alg were more viscous and needed higher pressure for printing; while the printed scaffolds were highly porous and showed a high degree of printability and structural integrity. The hydrogels with higher CMC ratios had higher swelling ratios, faster degradation rates, and lower compressive modulus. Dental epithelial cell line, HAT-7, could maintain high viability in the printed constructs after 1, 7 and 14 d of culture. HAT-7 cells were also able to maintain their morphology and secrete alkaline phosphatase after 14 d of culture in the 3D printed scaffolds, suggesting the capacity of these cells for mineral deposition and enamel-like tissue formation. Among all combinations Alg4%-CMC2% and in a less degree 2%Alg-4%CMC showed the higher potential to promote ameloblast differentiation, Ca and P deposition and matrix mineralizationin vitro. Taken together, Alg-CMC has been illustrated to be suitable to print scaffolds with dental epithelial cells for enamel tissue regeneration.

Stem Cells and Their Derivatives-Implications for Alveolar Bone Regeneration: A Comprehensive Review

Oral and craniofacial bone defects caused by congenital disease or trauma are widespread. In the case of severe alveolar bone defect, autologous bone grafting has been considered a “gold standard”; however, the procedure has several disadvantages, including limited supply, resorption, donor site morbidity, deformity, infection, and bone graft rejection. In the last few decades, bone tissue engineering combined with stem cell-based therapy may represent a possible alternative to current bone augmentation techniques. The number of studies investigating different cell-based bone tissue engineering methods to reconstruct alveolar bone damage is rapidly rising. As an interdisciplinary field, bone tissue engineering combines the use of osteogenic cells (stem cells/progenitor cells), bioactive molecules, and biocompatible scaffolds, whereas stem cells play a pivotal role. Therefore, our work highlights the osteogenic potential of various dental tissue-derived stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), the progress in differentiation techniques of iPSCs into osteoprogenitor cells, and the efforts that have been made to fabricate the most suitable and biocompatible scaffold material with osteoinductive properties for successful bone graft generation. Moreover, we discuss the application of stem cell-derived exosomes as a compelling new form of “stem-cell free” therapy.