NIDCR awards ADA Forsyth $6M to design restorative materials using AI

Composite will feature self-healing, antimicrobial properties

The ADA Forsyth Institute has been awarded a $6.2 million grant to develop next-generation smart materials for dental fillings using physics-based artificial intelligence.

This innovation marks one of the first applications of AI in basic oral health research, which will help to accelerate the testing and development process. The five-year award comes from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.

The new dental composite will feature self-healing and antimicrobial properties through the incorporation of nanofillers that react to biological signals.

“Imagine you have a crack developing in the filling, the material will detect that change and repair the crack,” said biomaterials expert Jirun Sun, Ph.D., the contact principal investigator leading the research team. “Or if your mouth has a lot of acid that lowers the pH, which is known to break down traditional composites and tooth structure, the material will counteract the acid. The smart material will automatically respond to changing conditions in each individual patient’s mouth.”

The transdisciplinary team of scientists will integrate experiments with a physics-based model of testing and data-driven simulations to design and evaluate the materials. The ADA Forsyth team has partnered on this project with Optimuos, a digital engineering firm specializing in creating virtual replicas of physical objects to simulate their behaviors.

“Without this approach, the number of parameters that we must test would have taken decades to complete,” Dr. Sun said. “Incorporating artificial intelligence and virtual lab simulations into the physical material development process, based on well-defined laws of physics and chemistry, will accelerate our goal of transforming personalized dental care.”

Ben Wu, D.D.S., Ph.D., chief scientific officer and chief operating officer of ADA Forsyth, emphasized the project’s broader implications.

“This grant is the first step to leveraging AI and deep learning to facilitate and accelerate research. This approach can be applied to the other cutting-edge innovative research at AFI, from managing drug-resistant biofilm to aberrant immunological host response and much more,” Dr. Wu said. “Our institute is well positioned to leverage the new tools of bioengineering, AI and data science to accelerate discovery and impact oral health.”

The new material will be optimized to provide a viable replacement for amalgam. Although alternative restorative filling materials currently exist, they may need to be replaced more often and can be more expensive to use. The scientists are designing these new materials to be easy to use and accessible to everyone. The ADA supports a phasedown approach to amalgam use.

“AFI scientists aren’t just creating something more durable, they’re creating a completely different generation of dental composite,” said Raymond Cohlmia, D.D.S., executive director of the ADA and chair of ADA Forsyth’s board of directors. “This smart material could revolutionize dental care and drastically improve patient outcomes. The future of dental restorations — and so much more — is happening now. I’m so proud that AFI is at the forefront.”

The other principal investigators working on this project are Felicitas Bidlack, Ph.D.; Yulong Zhang, Ph.D.; Xuesong He, D.D.S., Ph.D., and Ben Wu, D.D.S., Ph.D., from ADA Forsyth; Leyla Mirmomen, Ph.D., CEO at Optimuos; and Pirouz Kavehpour, Ph.D., professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and chief scientist at Optimuos.

For more research from ADA Forsyth, visit forsyth.org.