Autophagy and Oral Tissue Regeneration: A Comprehensive Review

The oral cavity is a constantly changing environment that requires continuous remodeling and regeneration. Autophagy plays a crucial role in oral tissue regeneration, as it is involved in controlling the burden of infectious agents, limiting inflammatory pathologies, regulating myeloid/lymphoid cell differentiation, and coordinating multicellular immunity. Autophagy also contributes to stem cell regulation and survival under stress conditions. Despite the significance of autophagy in oral tissue regeneration, there is a lack of systematic reviews on this topic.

This review focuses on the contribution of autophagy 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 the autophagy machinery in eukaryotic cells. We also review the molecular mechanisms involved in autophagy-regulated oral tissue regeneration and how autophagy can be regulated by small molecule drugs, biomaterials, exosomes/RNAs, or other specific treatments. Additionally, we discuss new perspectives on autophagy manipulation and oral tissue regeneration.

However, many questions remain unanswered about how autophagy contributes to oral tissue regeneration. Further mechanistic studies are necessary to address these questions for therapeutic purposes. This review aims to provide useful insights into the role of autophagy in oral tissue regeneration and may stimulate further research on autophagy in tissue regeneration.