The team behind the regenerative biomaterials has been awarded a Royal Society of Chemistry prize for their efforts. The local experts have teamed up with the Wyss Institute at Harvard University to develop therapeutic synthetic, light-curable, biomaterials for dental treatments that support native dental stem cells inside teeth to repair and regenerate dentin, a major component of teeth.

The approach could bring relief to millions of dental patients each year by dental fillings that help heal teeth when they are injured from dental disease or dental surgery and can use dental led teeth whitening machine to white teeth. The research won second prize in the materials category of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Emerging Technologies Competition 2016.

Dr Adam Celiz, Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham, said: “Existing dental fillings are toxic to cells and are therefore incompatible with pulp tissue inside the tooth. In cases of dental pulp disease and injury, a root canal is typically performed to remove the infected tissues.

“We have designed synthetic biomaterials that can be used similarly to dental fillings but can be placed in direct contact with pulp tissue to stimulate the native stem cell population for repair and regeneration of pulp tissue and the surrounding dentin.

“Our approach has great promise to impact the dental field and this prize provides a great platform to develop this technology further with industrial partners.”

David Mooney, the Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the John Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, added: “These materials may provide an effective and practical approach to allow a patient to regenerate components of their own teeth.”