Dental implants are increasingly attractive in the replacement of missing teeth:

• They have the look and feel of natural teeth
• They are more stable than traditional dental prostheses
• They do not require the sacrifice of adjacent healthy teeth in order to set up a prosthesis

However, dental implants require a stable and pressure-resistant bone to withstand the enormous forces involved in chewing. Often, the bone solidity and the healing rate is a critical success factor for the dental implant procedures. In certain patient groups the bone quality is restricted, resulting in significantly lower dental implant success rates compared to patients with normal bone quality. This is a problem generally associated with patients with the following additional factors:

• Insufficient oral hygiene
• Heavy smoking
• Osteoporosis
• Poorly treated diabetes, associated with high blood sugar levels

Another factor relating to dental implants is their aesthetic appearance, particularly as most patients have to pay privately for the treatment. Dental implants are usually metal devices, serving as abutments for the assembly of the crowns. These metal devices are body-foreign metal pieces, which have to be concealed to achieve an aesthetic result. The critical factor in this respect is a natural gum appearance with close connection to the implant.

This is not purely an aesthetic consideration, as a close connection between the dental implant and the surrounding soft tissue is crucial to avoid gaps which could allow for repeated bacterial infection. Although satisfactory soft tissue connection for the implant requires considerable technical expertise from the implantologist, it is also highly dependent on the quality of tissue at the implantation site. As both are subject to variability, adequate soft tissue connection of dental implants is often not achievable using current techniques.

Scil Technology´s MD06 is a dental implant coated with rhGDF-5 for use in critical implantation sites. rhGDF-5 is a human protein that acts by promoting the growth of bone. In MD06, by adding rhGDF-5, the titanium implant acquires osteoinductive properties making it especially useful for the application in patients with poor bone quality. In this way, MD06 encourages the growth of bone to secure the implant. MD06 will also offer aesthetic benefits, as the expected regenerative effect on the soft tissue should result in a natural gum appearance as well as a close connection of the soft tissue with the dental implant.