Abstract
Current commercially available barrier membranes for oral surgery have yet to achieve a perfect design. Existing materials used are either non-resorbable and require a second surgery for their extraction, or alternatively are resorbable but suffer from poor structural integrity or degrade into acidic by-products. Silk has the potential to overcome these issues and has yet to be made into a commercially available dental barrier membrane. Reactive inkjet printing (RIJ) has recently been demonstrated to be a suitable method for assembling silk in its regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) form into different constructs. This paper will establish the properties of RSF solutions for RIJ and the suitability of RIJ for the construction of RSF barrier membranes. Printed RSF films were characterised by their crystallinity and surface properties, which were shown to be controllable via RIJ. RSF films degraded in either phosphate buffered saline or protease XIV solutions had degradation rates related to RSF crystallinity. RSF films were also printed with the inclusion of nano-hydroxyapatite (nHA). As reactive inkjet printing could control RSF crystallinity and hence its degradation rate, as well as offering the ability to incorporate bioactive nHA inclusions, reactive inkjet printing is deemed a suitable alternative method for RSF processing and the production of dental barrier membranes.
Highlights
Periodontitis is a dental disease which damages the supporting structures of teeth, such as the alveolar bone, and can lead to eventual tooth loss
Silk has long been used as a suture material, but it is only with the ability to process silk into different three-dimensional (3D) structures using a reconstituted silk fibroin solution (RSF), can it be used for a wider variety of medical applications
We have demonstrated that regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) and nHA/RSF solutions can be successfully printed using an inkjet printer
Summary
Periodontitis is a dental disease which damages the supporting structures of teeth, such as the alveolar bone, and can lead to eventual tooth loss. Periodontitis has been shown to be present in a mild to severe form in 24.4% of adults aged between 30 and 34 years, which increases to 70.1% prevalence in adults aged 65 years and over [1]. Barrier membranes can be used in conjunction with guided bone regeneration (GBR) to help repair the damage caused by periodontitis. GBR promotes and directs the growth of new bone, whilst the barrier membrane secludes the defect site from infiltration by fast-growing connective and epithelial tissues which would otherwise fill the defect space. In the field of implantology, dental barrier membranes are used to aid with the fixation of dental implants in over 40% of implantations to improve bone augmentation [2]
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