Regenerative medicine in orthodontic therapy

Orthodontics and dentofacial orthopedics (ODO) form "the branch of dentistry that specializes in the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of dental and facial irregularities. The practice of orthodontics requires professional skills in the design, application and control of corrective appliances to bring teeth, lips and jaws into proper alignment and to achieve facial balance". Regenerative medicine enables scientists to grow tissues and organs in the laboratory and safely implant them when the body is unable to heal itself. Orthodontics and regenerative medicine are two separate fields of study, and yet with a multitude of unrealized common threads. This chapter attempts to identify potential interactions between ODO and regenerative medicine, including situations in which ODO may generate translational and clinical motivations for tissue engineering. In postnatal life, stem cells are generally those rare cells with the potential to differentiate into multiple cell types.