Insulin-like Growth Factor Binding Protein 7 identified in aged dental pulp by single-cell RNA sequencing

Dental pulp plays a crucial role for dental health, and dental pulp aging influences their regenerative and reparative function. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms of dental pulp aging are not exhaustively understood, and thereby an in-depth and complete understanding of the aged dental pulp is of foremost importance. This study aimed to explore the heterogeneity of young and aged dental pulp tissue using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq). A total of 24,158 cells were sequenced from dental pulp samples of 8 patients, and categorized into 8 main clusters, including fibroblast, endodothelial cell, monocyte, T cell, B cell, mesenchymal stem cells, Schwann cell, and non myelinating ScC. We investigated the communication between all cell types of in young and aged dental pulps by CellChat software. We established H2O2-induced DPF senescence model, and IGFBP7 was further validated the H2O2-induced DPF senescence model.