Dr. John Colombo (Dental) received a $25,000 Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) pilot grant to test his team’s hand-held tool that uses drug-free oxidant-generating technology to remove biofilms from dental pulp. Unlike other electrochemical-driven devices that have metal or boron-doped diamond electrodes, Colombo’s tool generates oxidants without detectable gas formation by applying voltage to an electrocatalytic titanium oxide-based probe. For the next year, the team will focus on quantifying the probe’s zone of influence by assessing damage induced on clonally isolated dental pulp progenitor cells as a function of distance and treatment time. Colombo included in the grant proposal research data from dental students Ghazal Rezaei and Haley Whalen who reported their findings about free oxide radicals during the 2020 Student Research Day Symposium.
