Autophagy and Oral Tissue Regeneration: A Comprehensive Review

The oral cavity is a unique environment that requires constant remodeling and regeneration, making autophagy essential for oral tissue regeneration. Additionally, the oral cavity harbors a large number of bacterial colonizers, and many oral diseases are caused by bacterial infection and immune reactions. Autophagy has been shown to play a crucial role in controlling the burden of infectious agents, limiting inflammatory pathologies, regulating cell differentiation, and coordinating immunity. Given its role in repairing damaged tissue, autophagy is closely associated with oral tissue regeneration. Despite numerous studies exploring the role of autophagy in oral diseases and regeneration, there has been no systematic review of its role in oral tissue regeneration.

This review focuses on the contribution of autophagy to stem cell regulation and oral tissue regeneration. It discusses how autophagy alleviates the survival stress of oral stem cells and provides an overview of the mechanisms involved in autophagy-regulated oral tissue regeneration. The review also explores how autophagy contributes to different components of oral tissue regeneration and how it can be regulated using small molecule drugs, biomaterials, exosomes/RNAs, or other specific treatments. Finally, the authors discuss new perspectives on autophagy manipulation and oral tissue regeneration. However, the mechanisms by which autophagy contributes to oral tissue regeneration remain unclear, and further mechanistic studies are necessary for therapeutic purposes. This review provides new insights into autophagy studies on oral tissue and other tissue regeneration and may be helpful in advancing human tissue regeneration research.