Introduction to Oral and Craniofacial Tissue Engineering

Oral and craniofacial tissues are important in several physiological functions such as mastication, speech, facial aesthetics, and the most important in the quality of health in life. This chapter describes the strategies for the regeneration of oral and craniofacial tissues. It first addresses the principles of the specific area related to dental tissue engineering and then describes the components of the extracellular matrix and what strategies are used to try to mimic the natural extracellular matrix of tissue structures by using of scaffolds. The chapter examines those strategies that are being used to try to understand how to achieve the regeneration of the oral and craniofacial complex. The regeneration strategies for the complex craniofacial structures is a highly promising field and in recent years focuses mainly on the regeneration of oral tissues such as oral mucosa, periodontal, bone and dental pulp tissues