Professors of the Dentistry Department

Chi, Lin-Yang Associate professor of the dentistry department NYMU

What do you think of HOPE?

“HOPE is definitely trying to use a brand new method to tackle the cavities cirisis. Over all these years, I have never heard of anyone who had seen bacteriophage as the answer for solving the problem of cavities. Given that phage are highly specific and with low concerns of biosafety, it will be your selling point."

How to improve HOPE?

“Do you know that one of the most irritating problems when you are brushing your teeth is not knowing when to stop? For current technologies, it is impossible for a normal person like you or me to make sure when our teeth is brushed thoroughly.“

“In dental clinics, dentists apply plague disclosing agent to the patients’ teeth, showing plagues in red immediately. However, if the plagues are not totally removed, the red stains will give others bad impression. Thus, the plague disclosing agent is often only used in clinics."

“Therefore if you can make HOPE indicate which places of your tooth are stained with plagues, it might become another selling point of your project!"

And this was the beginning or our Care part. We tried to do our best to give people an easier method of knowing if their teeth is clean enough.

Wu, Ching-Yi Dentist and associate professor of the dentistry department NYMU

Professor Wu was one of the first professors we visited. Besides being a professor of the dentistry department, he is also a dentist in a nearby hospital. Thus, we believed he was the right person to give us great advice.

At first we were pondering whether to use probiotics alone or make the probiotics cooperate with phage to combat oral cavities. After chatting with Professor Wu, we all agreed that phage will be needed in HOPE.

Moreover, professor Wu also lent us the HOPErfusion machine to help out our experiments.