Towards an improved dental pulp-capping therapy.

VITAL PULP THERAPY (pulp capping) is a clinical technique a dentist employs in an attempt to keep a traumatized tooth-pulp healthy, while avoiding an often technique-demanding and costly root-canal treatment that may weaken the tooth’s integrity and shorten its lifetime. Bioactivity towards the pulp-dentin complex is today considered a preferential property a modern dental restorative material should possess. The main pulp-capping agents today available to dentists are calcium hydroxide (gold standard) and calcium silicate formulations such as MTA (mineral trioxide aggregate). The latter still have shortcomings, and their superiority in pulp-capping effectiveness still needs to be proven. With this multi-disciplinary project, involving both fundamental and applied research, we intend to explore the underlying mechanisms of pulpal repair following ‘direct’ pulpcapping procedures, which today remain insufficiently understood (SUBPROJECT 1). We will determine how well the current materials meet the key requirements of a pulp-capping agent by subjecting them to a battery of biocompatibility, microbiology, physico-mechanical material and bonding/sealing effectiveness test set-ups (SUBPROJECT 2). Finally, we will evaluate a set of new experimental bioactive formulations on their pulp-capping potential (SUBPROJECT 3), with the final objective to introduce a new effective and predictable pulp-capping therapy to be tested clinically in humans in a next phase.