{"id":2781,"date":"2019-03-04T12:00:06","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T20:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/regrowing-enamel-usc-dental-professor-janet-moradian-oldak-is-on-the-case\/"},"modified":"2024-05-31T15:07:27","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T22:07:27","slug":"regrowing-enamel-usc-dental-professor-janet-moradian-oldak-is-on-the-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/regrowing-enamel-usc-dental-professor-janet-moradian-oldak-is-on-the-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Regrowing enamel? USC Dental Professor Janet Moradian-Oldak is on the case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n\n \n Press Release<\/span>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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Regrowing enamel? USC Dental Professor Janet Moradian-Oldak is on the case<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
\n \n March 04, 2019<\/span>\n <\/div>\n \n \n
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Dental enamel is tricky stuff. Even though it\u2019s the body\u2019s hardest material, if it wears away from cavities, acidic food or drinks or overbrushing, it doesn\u2019t regenerate.
\nAll that could change in the future, though. Ostrow Professor Janet Moradian-Oldak<\/a> has been developing a special hydrogel that can promote the growth of an enamel-like surface on teeth and remineralize the dentin.
\nThe patented hydrogel is based on chitosan-amelogenin peptide. Amelogenin is a substance that animals and human use to build dental enamel. A peptide is a chain of amino acids.
\nPainting on protection<\/strong>
\nMoradian-Oldak has received three new grants to continue her work. One grant will allow her to test the use of amelogenin-derived peptides in the gel. She explains that using short peptides \u2014 like the one she\u2019s using derived from the main protein in enamel \u2014 has a few benefits over longer ones: It\u2019s less expensive, and the path to getting this approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is simpler. Peptides could be incorporated into a gel that could then be painted onto teeth eroded by early cavities or hypersensitivity.
\nShe has already found that the peptide can regrow the aprismatic-like layer on teeth. Now the researchers will test whether this hydrogel works also for dentin remineralization.
\nThe second grant will continue the work to understand the basic structural biology of tooth enamel, and the third grant is the exploratory proposal, with the idea to completely use chemistry strategies to synthesize a material similar to enamel in its properties. \u201cOur idea is to use these short peptides to eventually develop new filling material,\u201d explains Moradian-Oldak, who works out of USC\u2019s Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology<\/a>.
\nCreating artificial cavities<\/strong>
\nTo test the new hydrogels, Moradian-Oldak has developed a method. She and her team of students \u2014 including Qichao Ruan, Kaushik Mukherjee, Gayathri Viskan and Amrita Chakraborty DDS \u201919 \u2014 use a diamond saw to slice third molars (wisdom teeth) into uniform thin discs. They then paint the teeth with a clear nail polish, leaving only a small window of unpainted surface. The researchers then place the tooth slices in acid to demineralize the exposed parts, creating artificial cavities or lesions.
\nNet, they put the hydrogel on those lesions and place the teeth in artificial saliva \u2014 made from calcium phosphate \u2014 to see how the gel promotes new growth on the enamel\u2019s surface. To test the hardness, Oldak teams up with a mechanical engineer with special machines. She also uses microscopes to analyze the regrowth\u2019s composition.
\nBetter than fluoride?<\/strong>
\nOverall, she\u2019s testing her models against teeth treated with fluoride. \u201cOur goal is to achieve properties that are comparable with natural tooth or other treatment modalities,\u201d she says. Fluoride is a cheap and easy way to make teeth stronger: it basically crates patches of calcium-phosphate deposits on top of the tooth, blocks the dentinal tubules.
\n\u201cFluoride promotes mineralization, and it really helps, but it doesn\u2019t rebuild enamel the way our peptide does,\u201d Moradian-Oldak says. \u201cFluoride is really about blocking the nerve, and our peptides are made in a biomimetic [lifelike] way.\u201d
\nOldak started off as a chemist with a background in biomineraliziation, studying the mechanisms that organisms use to make minerals in their bodies like teeth, bone, seashells or even kidney stones. \u201cI wanted to expand the basic science into something translational, something that could be developed as a treatment,\u201d she says. Teeth were a perfect fit.
\nFuture patients would not be able to avoid going to the dentist altogether, she says. \u201cWe don\u2019t have an intention to jeopardize dentistry jobs,\u201d she says. \u201cYou would still need to go to the dentist. But the most important implication is really preventing deep decay by addressing lesions early, to rebuild the lost enamel.\u201d
\nBY Katharine Gammon<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":168,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[135],"class_list":["post-2781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release","tag-mesh"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRegrowing enamel? 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