Tissue-biomaterial Interface Research for Prosthodontic Dentistry

This symposium will focus on the interface between biomaterials and host-tissue. Prosthetic dentistry is innately characterized as rehabilitation medicine with dental prostheses, including dental implant, made up of various kinds of biomaterials. The biomaterials form interfaces with the host-tissues like as teeth, oral mucosa and bone. Chemical, physical or mechanical interaction at the interface between biomaterial and tissues can, more or less, cause some sort of biological reactions, which relates essentially to the outcomes of the treatments. Thus, it is becoming considerable to comprehend the mechanisms of interactions at the interface and their importance for prosthetic dentistry. Dr. Yoshida, who is featurcd as one of the lecturers, and Professor Minagi, the chair of scientific committee of JPS, proposed the plan of'-this inteilnational symposium, featuring Professor Brunette at UBC, Professor Duyck at K. U. Leuven and Professor Yoshida as representatives of interface researchers. Details of their lectures in the symposium and their backgrounds are clearly described in their abstracts. At the symposium, I will introduce the outline of the inteilface researches as a chairDerson based on the Interface Oral Health Sciencei'2) wixich has been proposed by Tohoku University ~raduate School of Dentistry as the new concept of dentistiy since 2002, and the research proruotion project "Highly-ftinctional Interface Science" funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The latter p~'oject is proceeding as a multidisciplinary research project among Tohoku University Graduate School of Dentistry and Institute for Materials Research, Kyushu University Research Institute for Applied Mechanics from 2007 to 201 1 . The further approaches and directions of the interface researches will be discussed. It will be meaningful for regulating the interface acceptable and valuable to prosthetic dentistry. Furtherrnore it is helpful to open a vista for creating" noble interfaces with bio-ftmction. l ) Interface Oral Health Science, Watanabe M, Takahashi N, Takada H. eds. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005. 2) Interflace Oral Health Science 2007, Watanabe M and Okuno O, eds. Tokyo: Springer, 2007. Optimizing Tissue-implant Interfacial Interaetions by Implant Surface Topography Donald M Brunette Professor, Dept. of Oral Biological and Medical Sciences Faculty of Dentisty University of British Columbia Vancouver, B.C. Canada