In vitro proliferation of MSCs using mineral trioxide aggregate: A most recent material for in situ stem cells mobilization

Background Tissue/organ regeneration has been a major challenge before the scientific society in order to improve the functional benefit of the patients and dentistry has not been left untouched. The objective of endodontic therapy is to treat the affected tooth to become symptom free, without pathology and functional. Expansion of stem cell research has added a new paradigm to regenerative endodontic therapy. As far as dentistry is concerned number of stem cells is quite less and their application is often mimicked. Thus there is need to mobilize stem cells from other sources to increase the pool of regenerative cells. In endodontic therapy mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) has been used since last few years in a myriad of clinical applications but so for its chemotactic and inductive effect on human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) has not been demonstrated. Hence, the present study was aimed to find in vitro effect of ProRoot MTA on the proliferation of human bone marrow derived MSCs further to explore its clinical benefit in endodontic applications. Materials and methods Human bone marrow blood was collected in heparinized tubes and used for mononuclear cells (MNCs) isolation using Ficoll-paque density gradient medium. Cells were cultured in vitro and characterized for MSCs specific markers. After getting confluency cultured MSCs were subjected for MTT cell proliferation assay to assess the effect of MTA in long-term in vitro culture from day 0 to day 21. Results Significant increase in hMSCs proliferation was observed in both the groups (freshly coated MTA and 24 hours coated MTA) as compared to the controls from day 0 to day 21. Whereas, no significant difference was found between the two groups at each time of interval. Conclusion MTA is biocompatible vital material which significantly induces the proliferation of MSCs with no difference between material freshly prepared and incubated for 24 hours.