Current and future periodontal tissue engineering

Periodontitis is an inflammatory disease that leads to the loss of tooth-supporting tissues. Conventional periodontal treatment is generally unable to promote regeneration of the damaged periodontal structures. Recently, several studies have investigated the use of tissue engineering to facilitate predictable periodontal regeneration. This article reviews various technologies related to periodontal tissue engineering. These include bone grafting, guided tissue regeneration, enamel matrix protein derivative, growth factors, stem cell therapy, cell sheet engineering and laser treatment. Studies carried out by this group, and available clinical data, together with the authors own clinical experiences, are discussed. In addition, possible new directions that need to be exploited to make periodontal tissue engineering a clinical success are discussed herein.