The dexamethasone induced osteogenic differentiation of dental follicle cells.

Mesenchymal stem cells are excellent for in vitro studies about biological processes during the differentiation of osteogenic progenitor cells into mineralizing cells such as osteoblasts. Human dental follicle cells (DFCs) are dental mesenchymal stem cells and they can be isolated from third molar teeth. Because DFCs are the genuine progenitor cells of periodontal tissue cells, they have been used for the evaluation of molecular mechanisms during the differentiation of undifferentiated stem cells into alveolar osteoblasts and cementoblasts. To reveal molecular mechanisms of osteogenic differentiation, initial studies investigated the proteome and the transcriptome of DFCs after the induction of the osteogenic differentiation with the glucocorticoid dexamethasone. These studies showed for example that dexamethasone induces the transcription factor ZBTB16 (zinc finger and BTB domain containing protein 16) and that ZBTB16 is crucial for osteogenic differentiation of DFCs. This article is a survey of the molecular mechanisms in DFCs during osteogenic differentiation with dexamethasone.