Autophagy in 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 is home to numerous bacterial colonizers, leading to many oral diseases caused by bacterial infections and immune reactions. Autophagy plays a role in controlling infectious agents, limiting inflammatory pathologies, regulating myeloid/lymphoid cell differentiation, and coordinating multicellular immunity, further emphasizing its importance in oral tissue regeneration. While many studies have explored the role of autophagy in oral diseases and tissue regeneration, there has been no systematic review on its contribution to oral tissue regeneration.

This review focuses on the contribution of autophagy to stem cell regulation and oral tissue regeneration. We discuss how autophagy alleviates survival stress in oral stem cells and provide an overview of the autophagy machinery in eukaryotic cells. We also examine how autophagy contributes to different components of oral tissue regeneration and introduce the molecular mechanisms involved in autophagy-regulated oral tissue regeneration. Additionally, we review ways to regulate autophagy through small molecule drugs, biomaterials, exosomes/RNAs, and other specific treatments. Finally, we discuss new perspectives on manipulating autophagy for oral tissue regeneration. However, it is still unclear how autophagy contributes to oral tissue regeneration, and further mechanistic studies are necessary for therapeutic purposes. This review aims to provide new insights into human tissue regeneration and may be helpful for future autophagy studies on oral and other tissue regeneration.