Most of us probably take the ability to brush our teeth every day for granted. It’s a task that’s not quite so easy for people with a medical condition that affects motor control, or for people who are paralyzed or have had an arm amputated, or for people without access to supplies and running water.
John Gallagher observed that some 40 years ago while serving as an Army medic during the Vietnam War. Finding that it wasn’t easy for him as a traveler to find a sink and supplies to brush his teeth, much less for the patients he was working with who had lost arms to brush their own, he sketched up an alternative toothbrush that required no water, toothbrush or toothpaste.
Now called the Clean Bite, Gallagher’s invention is a dissolvable mouthpiece that’s made of gelatin, the sugar alcohol xylitol, and a dentrifice (another word for an agent that cleans and polishes the teeth) called The Answer. A user puts it in his mouth, chews it for 60 to 90 seconds – at which point it begins to dissolve – and then either swallows it or throws it away.
The cost of having the device patented was too high for Gallagher at the time, so his design sat on the back burner for upwards of three decades. Finally, he decided the time was right about five years ago and set out to raise money, build a prototype, do usability tests and have the design patented.
Today, he’s got more than a dozen people helping with the project, including collaborators at Creighton University School of Dentistry and the University of Maryland Dental School. And, Gallagher said he’s in talks with a few medical distributors to bring the Clean Bite to market.
Each mouthpiece has about 800 bristles that help distribute the dentrifice, which is stored in four reservoirs that rupture when a person bites down on them. If the idea of swallowing the dissolved material sounds a little strange, Gallagher said not to be alarmed: “It’s a certified food product; there’s nothing in it that’s not found in other food-related products.”
Plus, it’s not meant to replace a toothbrush and toothpaste. Rather, it’s intended to be an alternative way to clean the teeth, gums and tongue when brushing isn’t an option.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Although it has potential applications for the military, disaster relief and managed care facilities, to name a few, Gallagher said the primary market will be U.S. children who receive free or reduced-cost meals at school and are more likely to have untreated cavities.
Eventually, he sees them being sold on the shelves of drug stores or other places one might buy a pack of gum. He also sees them being sold outside of the U.S., in markets where oral health isn’t as strong. Because the mouthpieces are edible, he sees potential for them to be a way to deliver vitamins or other pharmaceutical products to those populations as well.
But first, he said he wants to prove that Clean Bite can keep teeth clean by running an efficacy study, which he said will require additional funding for the company, Dent-ChewBrush LLC.
“We don’t want to be looked at as a feel-good product,” he said. “We anticipate to hit 75-80 percent efficacy in what you would traditionally realize from toothbrush and toothpaste.”
[Image credit: Dent-Chew LLC]
