Autophagy and Oral Tissue Regeneration: A Comprehensive Review

The oral cavity is a unique environment that requires constant remodeling and regeneration, which is where autophagy plays a crucial role. Oral tissue regeneration involves a large number of bacterial colonizers, which can cause oral diseases due to bacterial infection and subsequent immune reactions. Autophagy is involved in controlling the burden of infectious agents, limiting inflammatory pathologies, regulating myeloid/lymphoid cell differentiation, and coordinating multicellular immunity. Autophagy also plays a significant role in repairing damaged tissue, making it closely associated with oral tissue regeneration.

Although many studies have explored the role of autophagy in oral diseases and oral tissue regeneration, there have been no systematic reviews on the matter. Thus, in this review, we focus on how autophagy contributes to stem cell regulation and oral tissue regeneration. We discuss the role of autophagy in alleviating the survival stress of oral stem cells and provide an overview of autophagy machinery in eukaryotic cells. We also review how autophagy contributes to different components of oral tissue regeneration and introduce the molecular mechanisms involved in autophagy-regulated oral tissue regeneration. Additionally, we provide insights on how to regulate autophagy by small molecule drugs, biomaterials, exosomes/RNAs, or other specific treatments.

Finally, we discuss new perspectives on autophagy manipulation and oral tissue regeneration. However, it is still unclear how autophagy contributes to oral tissue regeneration, and mechanistic studies are still necessary to address many questions for therapeutic purposes. Our review may be helpful for further autophagy studies on oral tissue and other tissue regeneration, providing new insights into human tissue regeneration.