Resumo

DALTOE, Felipe Perozzo; MIGUITA, Lucyene  e  MANTESSO, Andrea. Third dentition: an overview of its development. RGO, Rev. gaúch. odontol. (Online) [online]. 2010, vol.58, n.3, pp. 387-392. ISSN 1981-8637.

Even using the best techniches available, modern dentistry still replaces lost with metal implants covered with prosthetic crowns. Although these methods are effective, they are far from reproducing, qualitatively and quantitatively, all the biological structures that were lost. Meanwhile, there is a collective effort of scientists to create techniques that allow a natural tooth (Bio-tooth) to be created, using different cell populations and tissue engineering techniques. Although these researches are recent, they are advancing and promise to revolutionize the future of dentistry, since they offer the possibility of developing the third dentition in humans. In vivo clinical assays are still inexistent but there are that show different ways of making a complete dental element in a laboratory in animal models. Currently, there are four major techniques available to make bio-tooth and this paper makes a literature review to expose them, their advantages, disadvantages and perspective of future applicability in the clinical setting.

Palavras-chave : stem cells; tissue engineering; dentistry.