In the past decade, the field of stem cell biology is of major interest among researchers due to its broad therapeutic potential. Stem cells are a class of undifferentiated cells that are able to differentiate into specialised cell types. Stem cells can be classified into two main types: adult stem cells (adult tissues) and embryonic stem cells (embryos formed during the blastocyst phase of embryological development). This review will discuss two types of adult mesenchymal stem cells, dental stem cells and amniotic stem cells, with respect to their differentiation lineages, passage numbers and animal model studies. Amniotic stem cells have a greater number of differentiation lineages than dental stem cells. On the contrary, dental stem cells showed the highest number of passages compared to amniotic stem cells. For tissue regeneration based on animal studies, amniotic stem cells showed the shortest time to regenerate in comparison with dental stem cells.
* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.