Remineralisation of carious lesions by self-assembled peptide supramolecular networks

The investigation of a non-invasive, biomimetic mineralisation method of sub-surface carious lesions/ early caries lesions in tooth enamel is the field of attention in this project. P11-4 is a short peptide, which self-assembles in a supramolecular 3D network after applying in the carious lesion. The hypothesis is that this self-assembled structure triggers nucleation of de-novo hydroxyapatite nanocrystals and consequently results in lesion-remineralisation. Because of the limited availability and difficult access to usable human teeth and their great structural variability and composition a bioceramic tooth model will help to standardize the test systems and support the comparability of results. Keywords: Remineralisation, carious lesion, self-assembled peptide, artificial tooth model, hydroxyapatite