Autophagy in Oral Tissue Regeneration: A Comprehensive Review

The oral cavity is a unique and dynamic environment that requires constant remodeling and regeneration. Autophagy is a crucial process that plays a role in oral tissue regeneration, as well as in controlling the burden of infectious agents, limiting inflammatory pathologies, regulating myeloid/lymphoid cell differentiation, and coordinating multicellular immunity. Moreover, autophagy has been shown to be involved in the repairment of damaged tissue. Despite the many studies exploring the role of autophagy in oral diseases and oral tissue regeneration, there have been no systematic reviews on the topic.

This review focuses on the role of autophagy in stem cell regulation and oral tissue regeneration. Specifically, we discuss how autophagy contributes to 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. Finally, we discuss new perspectives on autophagy manipulation and its potential application in oral tissue regeneration.

However, many questions regarding the role of autophagy in oral tissue regeneration remain unanswered, and further mechanistic studies are necessary for therapeutic purposes. Nonetheless, this review may provide valuable insights into autophagy studies on oral tissue and other tissue regeneration and facilitate the development of new strategies for tissue regeneration in humans.