| Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools. |
© 2003 SAGE Publications Informatics Challenges in Tissue Engineering and BiomaterialsPresented at "Dental Informatics & Dental Research: Making the Connection", a conference held in, Bethesda, MD, USA, June 12–13, 2003, sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Center for Dental Informatics and supported in part by award 1R13DE014611-01 from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research/National Library of Medicine.
Director of Translational Research, New York University, College of Dentistry, 345 East 24th Street, Room 1003 S, New York, NY 10010; edr1{at}nyu.edu
Both tissue engineering and biomaterials have made tremendous strides recently, yet major questions remain unanswered. Tissue-engineered products have come to the market; others are in development. A fundamental issue that informatics could address for tissue engineering is to describe and to predict the cascade of biochemical and cellular reactions that occur as a function of time and implant material: surface texture, microporosity; pore size, density, and connectivity; and three-dimensional configuration. Behavior of ceramics, a subset of tissue-engineering scaffold materials and a mainstay of dental restorations, has been studied extensively for very thin layers and for thicknesses greater than 2 mm. Until recently, little has been known about dentally relevant thickness of 1–2 mm. Results have been surprising and are continuing to develop. Still, at least one fundamental question remains that could be addressed by informatics techniques: Where, along the spectrum of flat-polished material to 10-year clinical in vivo study, can we test to predict clinical performance of all-ceramic crowns accurately?
Key Words: Dental restorations CAD/CAM ceramics tissue engineering informatics
Advances in Dental Research, Vol. 17, No. 1,
49-54 (2003) |
|||