LSU Engineering, LSUHSC School of Dentistry Collaboration Illustrates Benefit to Industry

August 30, 2024 

Researchers Creating New Bonding Material for Braces

BATON ROUGE, LA – Each year, 9 million people in the U.S. get braces. Whether it’s to fix a bad bite or simply gain a more attractive smile, braces have almost become a rite of passage in Western culture. In an attempt to improve the effectiveness of bonding material used in braces, LSU Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) School of Dentistry-Prosthodontics is collaborating with LSU’s College of Engineering on three projects led by LSUHSC Digital Fabrication Center Director and LSU Petroleum Engineering Assistant Professor of Research Charles Taylor.

Taylor is working alongside LSUHSC School of Dentistry-Prosthodontics Department Head Karen Bruggers and LSUHSC Department of Orthodontics Clinical/Product Development Consultant and ORMCO Research Advisor Mark Coreil, who was responsible for bringing this work to the table.

“It was Mark’s idea to bid on some projects,” Taylor said. “A lot of these corporations are looking for testing capabilities at universities, and LSU is able to service this work a lot faster in a much more cost-efficient manner than contract research labs.”

Two of the three projects are sponsored by LSUHSC School of Dentistry, while all three are sponsored by ORMCO Corporation, an orthodontics supply company based in California. The projects involve testing orthodontic re-bonding techniques, evaluating orthodontic treatment products, and testing novel orthodontic products using LSU Engineering facilities.

“These projects illustrate a cohesiveness of work across the LSU system that utilizes the resources afforded by each to efficiently deliver industry needs,” Taylor said. “These projects show different campuses executing agreements with the sponsor and subawards/contracts extended to the other LSU campus to complete the work. They are a great illustration of the use of the facilities within the LSU system.”

Taylor and his team used the LSU Materials, Manufacturing, Testing, and Evaluation Facility (MMTEF) to test orthodontic re-bonding techniques and the LSU Advanced Manufacturing and Machining Facility (AMMF) to create custom fixtures for the testing.

The second project entailed using the LSU Shared Instrumentation Facility (SIF) and MMTEF to evaluate treatment products.

“What ORMCO really liked about this project was that we were able to offload all the shared instrumentation facility work to LSU SIF Director Dr. Dongmei Cao and hire her technicians outright,” Taylor said. “The turnaround was two and a half weeks, which blew ORMCO’s mind. We can call up MMTEF, and they have the machine ready the next week, so we walk in there and get our testing done in two days to expedite sample delivery to the LSU SIF. This is very beneficial to companies. They are also in direct contact with Dr. Cao. At LSU, once the contracts are in place, the work happens in the blink of an eye.”

The team used the MMTEF on its latest project to test the novel orthodontic products and AMMF to machine custom fixtures for the testing. The Digital Fabrication Center (LSUHSC Cost Center) was used in all three projects to 3D print sample holders and scaffolds.

“These capabilities provide immense value to this ortho company,” Taylor said. “They want to see how well they’re preserving the tooth surface and how effective their bracket bonding techniques are, and consequently, look at re-bonding in case the bracket breaks. LSU has a really good ecosystem for this type of work, and we want people to know that we can do it.”

Taylor says that LSUHSC School of Dentistry-Prosthodontics is world-renowned for color matching and aesthetics, and LSU is the last dental school in the country that has an in-house dental laboratory that can fabricate its own prosthetics.

“We can machine, mill, and fire crowns, dentures, and other prosthetics here,” Taylor said. “We’re the last dental school that has FDA-conformant facilities to do these things. We really want to do a lot more with LSU’s College of Engineering, and these projects are the rubric for how we want to work going forward.”

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Contact: Libby Haydel
Communications Manager
225-578-4840
ehaydel1@lsu.edu