Dental Pulp Derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells

Sibel Yildirim is professor at the Faculty of Dentistry, Department of Pediatric Dentistry, Bilecik Seyh Edebali University, Bilecik, Turkey. She has been lecturer and practicing dentistry at the university for years. Her colleagues and she have established the first multi-disciplinary, dental/oral research centre in Turkey. She has authored many papers in international journals and has completed several research projects. Along with her pediatric dentistry PhD, she has also her second PhD on histology and embryology. Her research interests include many aspects of dental pulp and induced pluripotent stem cells, deciduous tooth resorption, the viral ethiopathogenesis of pulpal/periapical diseases of deciduous teeth and vital regenerative pulp therapies using recombinant human proteins or gene therapy. Accordingly, she has led some experiments on deciduous tooth pulp tissue and her team obtained important results showing high regulatory capacity of dental pulp cells on the events of deciduous tooth resorption or retention.

She had a change to study with the indisputable leaders in the dental engineering field in Japan, Switzerland and the United States. She has become an expert for stem cells from the pulp tissue of deciduous and permanent teeth. In addition to her dental tissue engineering studies, she has pursued re-programming experiments. She could observe that stem cells that have dental origin displayed strong potential for reprogramming. She believes comprehensively that isolating epithelial and mesenchymal stem cells from deciduous teeth and reprogramming them will point toward novel venues for in situ restoration of dental tissue repair. Currently her ongoing projects are focused on epigenetic regulations in dental pulp tissue.

As a pediatric dentist, histologist and embryologist, after long years of experience in academic fields in different continents, she has found herself that she became a student again who is keen to reach beyond the traditional boundaries of biology. She totally convinced that complexity is the only field that helps to achieve her goals; moving one step closer to understanding life.