As many people who are dealing with periodontal disease end up having to undergo surgery, Santiago Orrego and Carolina Montoya have developed a noninvasive way of tackling the condition via smart dental biomaterials.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 47% of adults older than 30 have some form of gum disease, which is the most common cause of tooth loss.

As an alternative to surgery, Orrego and Montoya have created the Ambrilux Dental Gel, which regenerates bone tissue lost to periodontal disease and prevents further infections. Research for the gel was supported with funding from Philadelphia University City Science Center and internal funding from the school. Oral Biolife Inc., a company based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, has acquired a license from Temple University to commercialize the technology.

 “This gel aims to provide the same solution that the surgery offers, but without costly, painful, invasive treatments,” said Orrego, assistant professor at the Temple University Kornberg School of Dentistry and principal investigator of the school’s Smart Biomaterials Research Laboratory.

High-tech dentistry 

Piezoelectric materials have been used since World War I in sonar and later to power microphones, cell phones and electric guitar pickups.

Orrego, a mechanical engineer by training, has been working on using piezoelectric technology since he came to the U.S. for his PhD in 2011.

During his time as a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Orrego experimented with using piezoelectric materials for energy harvesting. He created a piezoelectric flag with the idea that wind would enable the flag to flap, causing the material to create electricity to power electronics in remote locations.

“The concept involved harnessing natural wind to make a flag vibrate, generating electricity to power small sensors for monitoring environmental signals in remote locations,” said Orrego.

Orrego and Montoya both graduated from Universidad EAFIT in Colombia.

After Orrego joined Temple in 2018 and began working with Montoya, a research associate in the Smart Biomaterials Lab, they started researching how they could use the piezoelectric technology to power antimicrobial and bone regenerative therapies.

The two engineers were captivated by the dental field, drawing inspiration from studying how dental tissues function from an engineering perspective.

“Enamel and dentin are extremely interesting materials since they have very unique microstructures, properties and architectural behavior,” Montoya explained.

“It’s fascinating to understand the principles of how these materials behave so that we can replicate them and fabricate our own bioinspired synthetic materials.”