ABSTRACT
Therapeutic dentin regeneration remains difficult to achieve, and a majority of the attention has been given to anabolic strategies to promote dentinogenesis directly, whereas, the available literature is insufficient to understand the role of inflammation and inflammatory complement system on dentinogenesis. The aim of this study is to determine the role of complement C5a receptor (C5aR) in regulating dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) differentiation and in vivo dentin regeneration. Human DPSCs were subjected to odontogenic differentiation in osteogenic media treated with the C5aR agonist and C5aR antagonist. In vivo dentin formation was evaluated using the dentin injury/pulp-capping model of the C5a-deficient and wild-type mice. In vitro results demonstrate that C5aR inhibition caused a substantial reduction in odontogenic DPSCs differentiation markers such as DMP-1 and DSPP, while the C5aR activation increased these key odontogenic genes compared to control. A reparative dentin formation using the C5a-deficient mice shows that dentin regeneration is significantly reduced in the C5a-deficient mice. These data suggest a positive role of C5aR in the odontogenic DPSCs differentiation and tertiary/reparative dentin formation. This study addresses a novel regulatory pathway and a therapeutic approach for improving the efficiency of dentin regeneration in affected teeth.