Autophagy in Oral Tissue Regeneration: A Comprehensive Review

The oral cavity is a unique environment that requires continuous remodeling and regeneration, making autophagy necessary for oral tissue regeneration. Additionally, the oral cavity is home to a large number of bacterial colonizers, which can cause oral diseases through infection and immune reactions. Autophagy plays a crucial role in controlling the burden of infectious agents, limiting inflammatory pathologies, regulating myeloid/lymphoid cell differentiation, and coordinating multicellular immunity. Combined with its role in repairing damaged tissue, autophagy has a close association with oral tissue regeneration.

Despite many studies exploring the role of autophagy in oral diseases and tissue regeneration, there have been no systematic reviews on the topic. This review focuses on how autophagy contributes to stem cell regulation and oral tissue regeneration. It discusses the role of autophagy in alleviating the survival stress of oral stem cells and provides an overview of autophagy machinery in eukaryotes. The review also examines how autophagy contributes to different components of oral tissue regeneration and introduces the molecular mechanisms involved in autophagy-regulated oral tissue regeneration.

The review also looks at how autophagy can be regulated by small molecule drugs, biomaterials, exosomes/RNAs, or other specific treatments. Finally, it discusses new perspectives on autophagy manipulation and oral tissue regeneration. Although there is still much to learn about how autophagy contributes to oral tissue regeneration, this review provides a helpful starting point for further research in this area. The hope is that this review will provide new insights into human tissue regeneration beyond the oral cavity.