Dentistry has long faced a blunt-instrument problem: antibacterial rinses and sterilising treatments kill indiscriminately, clearing pathogens and beneficial microbes alike and leaving the oral ecosystem unbalanced. A joint team spanning Yonsei's dental and engineering faculties, with collaborators at MIT and Sungkyunkwan University, has reported a subtler approach in Advanced Materials: a biomaterial that imitates the physical and chemical character of human mucosa, a substance poised between liquid and solid.
Rather than poisoning bacteria, the material interferes with their ability to stick together and build biofilms, the hardened microbial masses that entrench infection and sustain chronic inflammation. Because microbial imbalance, or dysbiosis, is what drives much chronic inflammation in the first place, harmful species struggle to establish colonies on and around the material while beneficial symbiotic microbes remain stable, preserving the ecological balance that healthy tissue depends on rather than clearing the field for whichever organism recolonises fastest.
Applied to infected wounds in animal tests, the material sharply reduced both acute and chronic inflammatory responses, and gene analysis showed fewer disease-causing bacteria alongside strongly suppressed expression of genes involved in producing pathogenic toxins. The Yonsei team, which included specialists in orthodontics, periodontology, oral biology and chemical engineering, points to treatment patches for oral disease and coatings for dental implants as near-term applications, with chronic gut and skin conditions linked to microbial imbalance as a longer-range target.