Adult stem cells reside in body tissues to preserve organs and whole organism homeostasis. They are acquiring a prominent role in the contemporary medicine. Many protocols to isolate and cultivate adult stem cells have been so far described, though they are often lengthy, laborious, and require very expansive instruments, materials, and reagents. On this basis, we describe a simple, cheap but at the same time functional method to: (1) isolate dental pulp stem cells (DPSC), (2) expand and cultivate DPSC, (3) cryopreserve DPSC, (4) characterize DPSC, and (5) differentiate DPSC into both mesenchymal and non-mesenchymal lineages.
Keywords: Cell extraction; Characterization; Dental pulp stem cells; Differentiation; Expansion; Neural crest.