Undergraduate Project \ Research funded by KAFD

Project Name :  Natural Gum to Stop Dental Caries Using Jordanian Medicinal Plants: Ex vivo Activity Study

​Project Description  

Dental decay is a wild spreading oral ailment worldwide. It is caused by acid-secreting bacterial biofilm. Natural herbs contain active metabolites to prevent and disrupt the formation of bacterial biofilm on dental surfaces. This study will evaluate the most promising Jordanian herbs in the prevention S. mutans biofilms. This will be conducted by in-vitro assay on metabolic active bacteria by conventional method and using bovine teeth model. This will be done after the formation of a biofilm from S. mutans as the model bacteria. The choice of the medicinal plant will be based on their traditional use as ethnomedicine to treat or prevent dental decay. These plants include Camellia sinensis leaves, Curcuma longa rhizomes, Achillea tomentosa Arial parts, Cinnamomum zeylanicum bark, Zingiber officinale rhizome, Thymus vulgaris leaves, Salvia rosmarinus leaves, Teucrium polium arial parts and Salvia officinalis leaves. More plants can be added to the research according to surveys that will be conducted.

Later, a natural gum formulation that contains the most effective plant extracts encapsulated nanoparticles will be formulated. For people with busy schedules, taking the time to brush and floss each day can seem like a nuisance, the proposed form will participate in resolving their problems as they can use the gum anytime and anywhere.

Background of The Research Proposal:  Dental caries is one of the most common infectious oral cavity diseases affecting approximately 2 billion people worldwide (Global Burden of Disease Collaborative Network., 2019). It is caused by the degradation and demineralization of the tooth calcified structures by bacterial acid secretion (Mosaddad et al., 2019). Bacteria such as Streptococcus mutants can consume carbohydrates and simple sugars to produce lipoteichoic acid. Moreover, it secrets exopolysaccharides that enhance microbial biofilm formation in the oral cavity encouraging more bacteria to cluster on the dental surface. Lactic acid secreted from lactobacillus spp. and Actinomyces spp. and some other anaerobic bacteria accelerate the base of enamel and dental demineralization outpacing remineralization (Sidhu et al., 2018). In order to prevent dental decay, a strategy to mitigate the virulence factors rather than intensive therapy that can affect the oral microbiome (Rajapakse et al., 2020). Virulence factors include quorum sensing, biofilms, toxins, and enzymatic inhibition (Warrier et al. 2021). As dental decay is mainly caused by bacterial biofilm formation, strategies to curb biofilm formation will support the dental caries prevention regimen (OmerOglou et al., 2022).

Natural herbs represent a valuable resource for secondary metabolites that has an important activity against bacterial biofilm formation. These metabolites act on different stages of biofilm formation such as bacterial adhesion and development stages by different mechanisms (Silva et al., 2016). Jordan is known to have a wide variety of medicinal and herbal species that is used by folk medicine as remedies to prevent many diseases including dental caries (Abu-Irmaileh & Afifi, 2003; Hudaib et al., 2008)

Moreover, using plant extracts and essential oils application is limited because they are unstable in extreme storage conditions including temperature flocculation, light, and pH changes.  This can be compensated by encapsulating it in nanoparticles. Natural extracts encapsulated nanoparticles can prolong the shelf life of such extracts by preserving them against environmental conditions (Soltanzadeh et al., 2021), it can also increase the efficacy of herbal extracts (Sachan and Gupta, 2015). Moreover, encapsulating natural extracts and essential oils in nanoparticles shows an improvement in their antimicrobial activity (Bravo et al., 2018). 

Objectives and Importance:  

• Major Object: 

To formulate natural gum based on Jordanian medicinal plants to prevent dental decay

• Other objects: 

- Extraction of active compounds from proposed plants by hydroalcoholic extraction and to calculate % yield.

- Establishing a TLC fingerprint for each plant extract.

- Determination of MIC of each plant against S. Mutants.

- In-Vitro determination of the anti-biofilm activity of the plant extracts on 96 well-plate. 

- Ex vivo determination of the anti-biofilm activity of the plant extracts on a bovine tooth. 

- Encapsulating the most promising plant extract/s in the chitosan-Arabic gum nanoparticle system and calculating the encapsulating efficiency.

- Study the release profile of particles using a pH-dependent release model.

- Determination of anti-bacterial and anti-biofilm activity of the synthesized particles.

• Project Importance and Innovation 

This project aims to accommodate the fast new lifestyles of most people. Long working hours, junk food eating, irregular eating time, lifestyle changes, and many other factors that participate in the spreading of dental caries disease and the urge to develop natural and environmentally friendly products that are cheap, easy to use, effective, safe, and stable. The current towered natural product and green markets have been widely investigated to overcome the bacterial resistance crisis of different synthetic products accompanied by economic restrictions and toxicity issues. Using indigenous Jordanian plants will highlight the diversity and potential benefits of Jordanian flora. The techniques that will be used will also mimic the actual situation for using such extracts as it will apply an ex vivo model. Developing a nanoparticle system to encapsulate the plant extract would also hugely influence one of the major problems for plant extract products which is stability. 

Formulating a natural gum represents an effective and convenient formulation that increases the contact time of these plant extracts’ loaded nanoparticles. Moreover, for people with busy schedules, taking the time to brush and floss each day can seem like a nuisance, the proposed form will participate in resolving their problems as they can use the gum anytime and anywhere. This research will hopefully engender a ready-to-use product. We hope at the end of this research to develop a safe, effective, stable, and conventional formula of natural Jordanian plants to prevent dental caries.

Outline the Marketing feasibility of your research proposal:

  

It will represent the base for developing a natural gum that can be used on the industrial scale to aid people in preventing dental decay by using it at any time during their busy day. By presenting this proposal and its results at different summits, we hope that it will attract different pharmaceutical and complementary medicine companies nationally and internationally.

University: University of Jodan

Faculty: Pharmacy

Department : Pharmaceutical Sciences 

Budget: :  5000 JOD

Supervised by :

Title / Dept. Academic Name

Professor of Natural Product Chemistry, Phytochemistry and CAM therapy/ Pharmaceutical Sciences Department , Pharmacy

University professor and vice dean, the university of Jordan, School of Dentistry 2. Professor Firas Alsoleihat

Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences, lecturer in University of Jordan, School of Pharmacy 3. Ph. Zahra Suliman 

Project Team:

                                             

Student Name Classification

1. Ahamad Talal Ahmad Aburjai

2. Tala Ihab Abdelghani Hasan Pharmacy-team member 

3.Rogen Yousef Nabeel Pharmacy-team member