daily AAE New Orleans April 26, 2017

may have gained a powerful, if tiny, new ally. Researchers from the UCLA School of Dentistry have found that using nanodiamonds to fortify a material used in the procedure could significantly improve outcomes for patients. A paper on their research was published in the peer-reviewed journal ACS Nano. Nanodiamonds are tiny particles formed as byproducts of diamond re- AD During a root canal, inflamed dental pulp is removed and the empty space is then filled in with a polymer called gutta percha, which is used in part because it does not react within the body. But some root canals don’t entirely remove the in- fection, and residual infection after root canals can lead to tooth loss. In addition, traditional gutta-percha has certain shortcomings, including a limited capacity to ward off infection and less-than-optimal rigidity. Each year, more than 15 million root canal procedures are performed in the United States. Dentists’ goal is to save their patients’ teeth from infected den- tal “pulp” — the part of the tooth that includes blood vessels and nerve tissue. 8 EN D O N EWS Endo Tribune U.S. Edition | April 26, 2017 Nanodiamonds might prevent tooth loss after root canals People undergoing root canals fining and mining. Thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, they have been widely explored for use in dentistry, cancer therapy, imaging and regenerative medicine, among other ap- plications. A 3-D image of a tooth filled with nanodiamond-enhanced gutta-percha, and an individual gutta-percha point. Photo/American Chemical Society, Dong-Keun Lee To overcome those issues, the UCLA team developed and tested two types of reinforced gutta-percha: One strength- ened with nanodiamonds and another strengthened with nanodiamonds that had been pre-loaded with antibiotics. To evaluate the first type, Sue Vin Kim and Adelheid Nerisa Limansubroto, study co-authors and UCLA Dentistry students, filled actual teeth from human patients. Using conventional radiography and micro-computed tomography, or micro- CT, they showed that the nanodiamond- enhanced gutta-percha could be used to fill the tooth. Like the traditional formu- lation, the nanodiamond-enhanced com- pound did leave small gaps in the canal — where harmful bacteria could grow — but the CT imaging showed that the enhanced material filled the space just as effectively as traditional gutta-percha. In the research’s second phase, the sci- entists tested nanodiamonds that had been loaded with amoxicillin, a broad- spectrum antibiotic used to combat in- fection. The drug-reinforced nanodia- monds, when combined with the gutta percha, effectively prevented bacteria growth. “The nanodiamond-enhanced gutta- percha combines many desirable prop- erties into a single platform, including vastly improved mechanical character- istics and the ability to combat bacte- rial infection following a root canal,” said Dong-Keun Lee, a postdoctoral scholar in Ho’s lab. The study involved UCLA researchers with expertise in a wide range of disci- plines — materials science, nanotechnol- ogy, drug delivery, toxicology, oral radi- ology, endodontics, microbiology and other fields. “Through their ingenuity and collabo- ration, Professor Ho’s team is poised to transform the way that dentistry is prac- ticed,” said Dr. No-Hee Park, dean of UCLA Dentistry and a co-author of the study. During the next two years, the team plans optimize the formulation of the nanodiamond-reinforced gutta-percha and begin clinical trials at UCLA. The study was supported by the Na- tional Cancer Institute, the National Sci- ence Foundation, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, the V Foundation for Cancer Research, the Society for Laboratory Au- tomation and Screening, and Beckman Coulter Life Sciences. (Source: UCLA School of Dentistry)

daily AAE New Orleans April 26, 2017

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