Development of a novel calcium remineralization method for damaged teeth using Amelotin Protein
KIM, Clarissa Myung-Jin
DOI: http://doi.org/10.34614/2022IYRC28
Category: STEM
Abstract – Tooth remineralization has a significant impact on the hardness and strength of tooth enamel. Therefore, many studies focus on activating remineralization for recovering damaged tooth enamel. Dental fillings have been originally used to recover dental cavities. However, the failure rate of treatment is high because secondary caries at the dentin cause dentin erosion. Thus, a more effective way of dentin remineralization is needed. A recent study showed that Amelotin (AMTN) overexpression profoundly affected developing enamel structure by activating remineralization. Therefore, we hypothesized that overexpressing AMTN would activate the biomineralization of human gingival cells, one of the cells composing the surface lining tissue of human teeth. We proposed that this would be an effective way to restore the demineralized and damaged dentin. We optimized the overexpression AMTN condition on YD-38, a human gingival cell line. First, we verified the overexpression of AMTN by quantifying AMTN mRNA expression level. Also, AMTN overexpression increased the calcium deposits on YD-38 cells, indicating active mineralization. In addition, we used the coke to induce damage on the chicken eggshell model to test whether AMTN recovers calcium carbonate. We found out that AMTN overexpression significantly recovers calcium carbonate from damaged eggshells. In conclusion, our data demonstrated that overexpressing amelotin may be developed into a promising therapeutic reagent for recovering dentin erosion on human teeth.