Naturally-Derived Biomaterials for Oral and Dental Tissue Engineering

Damage to different body tissues may occur as a result of trauma, injury, or disease, which requires therapies to aid their healing through repair or regeneration. Tissue engineering aims to repair, sustain or recover the function of injured tissue or organs by producing biological substitutes. Advances in different approaches of dental tissue engineering, ranging from conventional triad (stem cells, scaffold, and regulatory signals-based tissue engineering) to modern technologies (3D printing and 4D printing), further emphasize that there are promising treatment approaches offered by the dental tissue engineering field to a variety of orofacial disorders, specifically through the design and manufacture of materials, application of appropriate regulatory signals and the enhanced knowledge of stem cells application. Inspired by their unique properties, scaffolds of natural origins, such as chitosan, cellulose, alginate, collagen, silk, and gelatin, have become a popular source of materials manufacturing that would simulate the biological environment. Future research should focus on translating laboratory findings into feasible therapies, i.e., directing basic sciences discovered in dental tissue engineering into contemporary clinically applicable therapies for orofacial disorders.

Keywords: Biomaterials, Chitosan, Dental tissue engineering, Polymer, Polysaccharide-based biomaterials, Protein-based biomaterial.