Adhesive Dentistry Research Group

Dental adhesive technology continues to evolve at a surprisingly rapid pace. Tooth is a complex natural composite with innumerous challenges to material scientists concerning the replacement of missing parts. While bonding to enamel is considered quite effective and predictable, dentin-bonding remains a challenge. Dentin is complex histologic structure intrinsically hydrated composed primarily of mineralized collagen forming a dynamic-heterogeneous tissue with different levels of mineralization.

Resin-dentin bonding is a unique form of tissue engineering in which demineralized collagen matrices with the porosities of 10-30 nm wide interfibrillar spaces serves as a scaffold for the replacement material. A different approach is to chemically bond specific functional self-etch monomers to calcium molecules forming a nanolayered structured. Regardless of the bonding approach, nanometer scale biocomposites must be engineered within minutes in situ and are expected to last for a long period of time. Invariably, this is not the case with current bonding strategies and materials.

Despite all improvements in adhesive dentistry over the past decades, tooth-colored restorations still present an average survival rate of only 5.7 years. Inherent shortcomings of restorative materials contribute to the limited durability of resin-dentin bonds, which is further aggravated by the water-sorption-induced hydrolysis of the hydrophilic resin components present in the adhesives and by the degradation of collagen fibrils via endogenous matrix metalloproteinases and cysteine cathepsins. Therefore, our special interests include biological-biochemistry interaction between different biomaterials and tooth-interfaces, mechanical/physical of properties of restorative dental materials and their interfaces, general adhesion of dental materials, morphological characterization of tooth-interfaces, X-ray diffraction surface analysis, biocompatibility of dental materials, pulp-regenerative scaffolds and photo-polymerization phenomena.

 

Group leader

Professor Arzu Tezvergil-Mutluay
DDS, PhD, FADM, Specialist in Prosthodontics and Clinical Dentistry
Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Dentistry
University of Turku

Contact
arztez@utu.fi
+358 29 450 2816
+358 40 189 1937

Research topics

The research group works mainly on eight main strategies to further understand and improve the durability of tooth-restoration interfaces:

  1. To expand the knowledge about the enzymatic degradation of dental hard tissues and develop natural materials to control such enzymatic activity.
  2. To develop and model nanoscale biomimetic antimicrobial materials to reinforce the degraded collagen scaffolds.
  3. To inhibit the endogenous matrix metalloproteinase activity by means of anti-MMP compounds and monomers, which could copolymerize, stay stable as a part of hybrid layers.
  4. To develop strategies for biomimetic remineralization of degraded collagen scaffolds.
  5. To characterize and predict the biomechanical behavior of bonded interfaces through more realistic scenarios including cyclic loading and fatigue simulations.
  6. To develop new clinically feasible bonding protocols to reduce technique sensitivity and to prolong the durability of resin-dentin interfaces.
  7. To develop nanofibrous drug delivery systems for dentin/pulp regeneration.
  8. To evaluate effect of curing lights on the longevity of restorations.