Identification of gene related to stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth (SHED) into epithelial-like differentiation using co-culture in epithelial microenvironment

We employed microarray profiling to determine the gene(s) that control human exfoliated deciduous teeth (SHED) differentiation into epithelial-like cells. We introduced epithelial microenvironment using keratinocyte serum free medium (KSFM) and co-culture with human epithelial keratinocyte (HEK001) to promote epithelial-like differentiation. In this study, SHED was co-cultured with HEK001 in the keratinocyte serum free medium until day 7. Total RNA samples were harvested at day 5 and 7 for One-Step Real Time PCR for validation epithelial-like differentiation. SHED cultured in alpha-minimum essential medium (α-MEM) for 24-hours as a stem cell negative control, while HEK001 cultured in KSFM (24-hours) was a keratinocyte positive control. SHED cultured in KSFM for 7 days were used as SHED-epithelial differentiation control. This model set-up was used to investigate the SHED-epithelial differentiation processes, which also allowed researchers to investigate the secretome effect of keratinocyte on SHED. Experiments were done in triplicate.