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 typically harbors a large number of bacterial colonizers, and many oral diseases are caused by bacterial infections and subsequent immune reactions. Numerous studies have reported that autophagy plays a crucial role in controlling the burden of infectious agents, limiting inflammatory pathologies, regulating myeloid/lymphoid cell differentiation, and coordinating multicellular immunity. Considering the role of autophagy in repairing damaged tissue, it is clear that autophagy has a close association with oral tissue regeneration.

Despite extensive research on the role of autophagy in oral diseases and oral tissue regeneration, there have been no systematic reviews on the subject. 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 eukaryotes. We also review how autophagy contributes to the different components of oral tissue regeneration.

We introduce the molecular mechanisms involved in autophagy-regulated oral tissue regeneration and how to regulate autophagy using small molecule drugs, biomaterials, exosomes/RNAs, or other specific treatments. Finally, we discuss new perspectives on autophagy manipulation and oral tissue regeneration. However, despite the progress made in this field, it is still unclear how autophagy contributes to oral tissue regeneration, and mechanistic studies are necessary to address many questions for therapeutic purposes. We hope that our review will be helpful for further autophagy studies on oral tissue and other tissue regeneration and provide new insights into human tissue regeneration.