Nanomagnetic-mediated drug delivery for the treatment of dental disease

Maintaining the vitality of the dental pulp, the highly innervated and highly vascular, innermost layer of the tooth, is a critical goal of any dental procedure. Upon injury, targeting the pulp with specific therapies is challenging because it is encased in hard tissues. This project describes a method that can effectively deliver therapeutic agents to the pulp. This method relies on the use of nanoparticles that can be actively steered using magnetic forces to the pulp, traveling through naturally occurring channels in the dentin (the middle layer of the tooth). This method can reduce the inflammation of injured pulp and improve the penetration of dental adhesives into dentin. Such a delivery method would be less expensive, and both less painful and less traumatic than existing therapeutic options available for treatment of injured dental pulp. This technique would be simple and could be readily translated to clinical use. In this manuscript, technology to steer and deliver drug-laden nanoparticles to the tooth pulp is described. This technology exploits naturally occurring dentinal tubules that extend from the dentin to the pulp, and magnetic forces to actively steer iron nanoparticles deep into the tooth structure. This technology was tested on rat molar teeth and in freshly extracted human teeth and can be used to deliver drug-laden nanoparticles to the pulp, or to enhance the bond strength of commercially available resin adhesives to the tooth dentin. [Display omitted]