Study of the correlation between human dental pulp stem cells frequency and blood vessel density

• Grant number: 13/10061-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2013
• End date: August 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Dentistry - Endodontics
• Principal Investigator: Marcelo Rocha Marques
• Grantee: Tatiane Bortolin Barbosa
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Odontologia de Piracicaba (FOP). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Studies have shown that human dental pulp can serve as a source of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), to be used in cell therapy. Therefore, it is important more advances to understand more about the biology of these cells such as the embryological origin, the spatial location, potential of the differentiation, to better explore the ability of these cells in therapy. It has been reported that mesenchymal stem cells in some tissues have a spatial relationship with blood vessel location. The aim of this study is to verify if there is a positive correlation between the vascular density of human dental pulp with the frequency of CFU-F (colony forming units of fibroblasts, an important characteristic of the MSC) generated from this tissue. For this study, we will selected 10 patients, aged between 15 and 19 years, which have indication for orthodontic removal of two paired thirds molar (2 upper or 2 lower ) with dimensions mesial-distal, buccal- lingual, occlusal-apical similar to each. The dental pulp of a tooth will be collected, and after digestion of the extracellular matrix, a test for detecting the frequency of CFU-F will be done, starting with different initial concentrations of viable cells. The contralateral tooth collected from the same patient will be processed to perform histological sections. Three sections obtained from each pulp will be marked by immunohistochemistry for CD34, a specific marker for blood vessels, and after scanning images of the slices, it will be a counted the area of the pulp vessels (vascular density). The data collected will be tabulated and submitted to statistical tests for detection of normal distribution and homogeneity of variance in order to elect the type of correlation and regression will be used to determine the association between frequency of CFU-F and density of blood vessels of the human pulp dental.