Nanodantists
Scientists have developed nanobots for the treatment of dental canals
Sergey Vasiliev, Naked Science
Each root of the tooth has a narrow internal canal, from which even thinner tubules branch off: nerves and vessels approach the tooth through them. Tooth damage can spread to them, and the treatment of tooth canals is one of the most common dental procedures.
To do this, the specialist removes the damaged part of the pulp, the soft inner tissue, and usually fills the cavity with antibiotics or other drugs to destroy the microbes trapped there. However, the drug is not always able to penetrate all the narrow tubules, besides, bacteria resistant to the chosen drug may be in the tooth. Therefore, the effectiveness of such treatment remains largely a matter of chance, and often it is not possible to save the tooth. Alternative methods, such as laser processing of channels, are far from ideal.
Perhaps microscopic devices created by scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) together with the startup Theranautilus will be able to really cope with the treatment of dental tubules. The new development is described in an article published in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials (Dasgupta et al., Mobile Nanobots for Prevention of Root Canal Treatment Failure).
The authors obtained tiny spiral structures made of silicon dioxide, covered with the thinnest layer of iron. The metal surface allows them to react to an external magnetic field, and the spiral shape allows them to move under this force, literally twisting into the medium. Scientists confirmed this by injecting such "nanobots" into samples of diseased teeth (removed from real patients) and tracing their movements under a microscope.
On the left — "nanobots" enter the canal of the tooth. In the center at the bottom is a picture of one of them inside the tubule, at the top is the same image schematically. On the right is a micrograph taken during the destruction of microbes by heat: living bacterial cells are colored green, dead ones are red / ©Theranautilus
Miniature spiral devices were able to penetrate even the deepest and narrowest branches of the dental tubules, to a depth of up to 2000 micrometers. At the same time, by varying the frequency of fluctuations of the magnetic field, it is possible to make the iron on the surface of the "nanobots" warm up, killing the bacterial cells with which they come into contact, and without harming the tissues of the tooth itself. In addition, the authors tested this approach on mice, confirming its operability.
Now the Theranautilus startup is moving to create a full-fledged system for treating people. In particular, engineers plan to create a device that will be placed in the patient's mouth and allow doctors to introduce "nanobots" into the cavity of the desired tooth and then control them. "We are already very close to clinical trials of this technology, although three years ago it seemed like a complete fantasy," he noted Ambarish Ghosh.
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