The dental market is well positioned to expand quickly over the next 30 years with 2 key underlying trends set to drive growth:

• an ageing and relatively wealthy population in the advanced economies
• rapid growth of a new middle-class in the emerging economies that will yield at least one billion new dental patients 

Within the dental market sector, indirect dental restorations are a large and growing market, with over 20 million dental restorations carried out in the US per year and in the UK in 1998, over 55% of dentate adults had at least one decayed or unsound tooth. 

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have developed a novel, fully-synthetic fluorcanasite material with class-leading properties and that is inexpensive to produce.  Our material, Fluorcanasite S82, is stronger than currently available materials, has higher fracture toughness, has class leading aesthetic properties and is designed to be machinable with all common CAD/CAM systems.  Fluorcanasite is strikingly more similar in appearance to a real tooth than competitor products.

We are currently undertaking work to ensure regulatory compliance for the material and are making rapid progress towards compiling a data file suitable for applying for CE marking/FDA approval.

We have filed a patent application on the material covering its use in numerous dental applications.

We are currently seeking a licensee for this technology, in order to bring this product to the marketplace and realise its commercial potential.