Table 1.

A summary of the dental and non-dental therapeutic applications of dental pulp stem cells.

Dental therapeutic applications	Non-dental therapeutic applications	Benefits	Limitations
Dentin/Pulp complex regeneration	Spinal cord injury and peripheral nerve tissue repair	Clinically accessible source	May become limited with age
Craniofacial bone regeneration	Cardiac repair/angiogenesis and treatment of ischemic disease	Can be banked easily and with low cost	Lack of optimized standardized protocols for isolation and characterization of clinical grade cells
Enhancing osseointegration of dental implants	Corneal and retinal regeneration	Higher proliferative and osteogenic differentiation capacities compared to bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells	DPSCs may lose plasticity with passaging as compared to SHED which retain their characteristics
Treatment of osteoradionecrosis	Muscular dystrophy and tendon regeneration	Derived from the neural crest	Express pluripotency markers at a lesser degree than SHED
	Diabetes mellitus including treatment of diabetic neuropathic pain