Author Description

This dissertation, "Biomimetic Remineralisation of Hydroxyapatite on Human Enamel and Dentine" by Ying, Cao,, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Dental enamel is the highly mineralised tissue made up of approximately 95% hydroxyapatite. As the outermost layer of teeth, enamel is susceptible to caries due to the products of bacteria metabolism; or can be lost by trauma or by non-carious tooth loss resulting from dental erosion, attrition, abrasion or acidic foods. As the enamel lesions progress into dentine, tooth hypersensitivity often develops when the exposed dentine is subjected to stimuli. Traditional treatments include replacing the defected tooth structure with dental restorative materials such as amalgam, composite resin, and ceramics. However, marginal leakage, hypersensitivity and secondary caries often happens at the interface. Therefore, there is a need for scientists to design an alternative strategy to repair the tooth lesions. Biomineralisation process is an organic matrix-mediated non-classical crystallization pathway. Biomimetic mineralisation is concepts from biomineralisation trying to transfer biomineralisation principles to the regeneration of new biomaterials. This study systematically reviewed the laboratory methods on biomimetic mineralisation of demineralised human enamel and dentine, respectively. Many studies reported success in biomimetic mineralisation of enamel and dentine. However, there still exist some problems in the biomimetic mineralisation of enamel and dentine, such as remineralisation conducted under non-physiological conditions, potential contamination i