Ricerc@Sapienza

Human Dental Pulp Stem Cells (hDPSCs) represent a type of adult mesenchymal stem cells that have the ability to differentiate in vitro in several lineages such as odontoblasts, osteoblasts, chondrocytes, adipocytes and neurons. In the current work, we used hDPSCs as the experimental model to study the role of recombinant prion protein 23–231 (recPrP C ) in the neuronal differentiation process, and in the signal pathway activation of ERK 1/2 and Akt.

Keratins derived from human hair have been widely used for tissue engineering. However, some drawbacks relative to the traditional keratins extracts have been found: (a): difficultly controlling the amino acid composition; (b): batch to batch inconsistent quality; and (c): producing complex keratin and keratin-associated proteins (KAPs), which problems have made some studies concerning human hair keratins stagnant, especially in the mechanism studies related to hemostasis of keratins.