Background: Teeth are an ectodermal organ that is derived from sequential reciprocal interactions between oral epithelial cells and cranial neural crest–derived mesenchymal cells. Human tooth‐ associated stem cell populations include dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs), periodontal ligament stem cells (PDLSCs), and stem cells from human exfoliated deciduous teeth (SHED), have been isolated from dental pulp and periodontal ligament tissues. Although dental stem cells possess colony formation, proliferation and multipotent differentiation capacity to generate osteogenic, adipogenic and chondrogenic lineages in vitro similar to BMMSCs under certain conditions, they also displayed their own distinctive regenerative potential different from each other in vivo, suggesting that tissue specific stem cells might be the optimal choice for self-tissues repair and regeneration.