Conclusion
Dental pulp stem cells which can be separated from dental pulp fibroblasts based on CD146 expression, express higher levels of some drug resistance genes which probably accounts for their features of more resistance to cytotoxic effects of some dental materials. This needs to be more validated in future.
Results
Only the CD146 positive portion could be differentiated into the desired fates, and they formed higher colonies (16.7 ± 3.32 vs. 1.7 ± 1.67, p < .001). The cell surface antigen panels were the same, except for CD146 and STRO-1 markers which were expressed only in the positive portion. Among the ABC transporter genes studied, the positive portion showed a higher expression (approximately two-fold) of ABCA2, ABCC5-13, and ABCC5-2 genes.