Project Details

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Artificial mouth flow cells for bacterial transplants

Company: Microversal LLC

Major(s):
Primary: BME
Secondary: IE
Optional: MATSE

Non-Disclosure Agreement: NO

Intellectual Property: NO

This project is to make improvements to a patent-pending 3-D printed flow cell that is used to grow bacterial biofilms from the human mouth. The reuseable flow cell mimics a human mouth and uses a confined space made from autoclave-able materials, hydroxyapatite discs that mimic human tooth enamel, and a flow rate of human saliva media that mimics the amount of saliva produced in the human mouth. Bacterial biofilms collected from donors are injected into the system to grow so that they can then be tested for safety, modified for efficacy, or studied for the purposes of oral microbiome transplantation. Microversal LLC utilizes these biofilms to grow donor dental plaque for the development of new preventative treatments for dental decay (cavities) and periodontal disease. Microversal LLC would like to work with a team that can develop improvements into the flow cell that include increasing the size of the growth chamber by at least 6x its current size and output and allowing the flow cell to be opened and accessed in real time while the flow cell is running. A successful project will produce a new flow cell that will be used in commercial production of biofilms by Microbersal LLC.