Every year, millions of Americans receive dental implants to replace missing teeth. These implants look and function like natural teeth in many ways—but one major thing is missing: feeling. Traditional implants don’t connect to the body’s sensory system, so patients can’t sense pressure, texture, or touch like they can with real teeth.
Now, a research team from Tufts University may have found a solution. In a new study published in Scientific Reports, scientists at the Tufts School of Dental Medicine and School of Medicine have developed a new type of dental implant designed to restore not just chewing function, but also sensation. Their early results in rodents show exciting potential.
Normally, natural teeth are anchored in the jaw by soft tissue filled with nerves. These nerves send information to the brain about how hard you’re biting or what texture you’re feeling.
But dental implants, which are typically made from titanium posts fused directly to the bone, do not include this connection. The surgery to insert them often cuts through nerve tissue, and the metal does not regenerate those nerves.
To address this problem, the Tufts team created a new kind of “smart” implant. It uses a soft, biodegradable coating that wraps around the titanium base. This coating contains stem cells and a special protein that helps these cells grow and develop into nerve tissue.
As the coating slowly dissolves during the healing process, it releases the stem cells and protein, encouraging the growth of nerves around the implant site.
There’s more: the coating also includes tiny soft particles—like memory foam—that are compressed when the implant is placed into the tooth socket. Once inside, they expand and gently push outward to fill the gap left by the missing tooth.
This creates a snug fit without requiring heavy drilling or damage to nearby nerves. The new surgical technique is much less invasive than traditional implant procedures.
“This method could help reconnect nerves and let the implant ‘talk’ to the brain, like a natural tooth does,” explains senior author Professor Jake Jinkun Chen from Tufts. The hope is that patients could regain the ability to sense how hard they are biting or detect textures—something no existing implant can do.
The implants were tested in rats for six weeks. The results were encouraging: the implants stayed in place with no signs of inflammation or rejection. Imaging showed something different from standard implants. Instead of fusing directly to the bone, the new implant left a small space filled with soft tissue—just like real teeth do—suggesting nerves might be regrowing around it.
Though this study was only in small animals, the potential goes far beyond dentistry. Chen believes that this approach could eventually improve other implants too, such as those used in hip replacements or broken bones, by making them better connected to the body’s nervous system.
The next step for the researchers is a preclinical study in larger animals to confirm the safety and function of the nerve connections. They also plan to test whether the nerves around the implant truly send messages to the brain.
While it will take time before these implants are ready for human use, the idea of bringing “feeling” back to dental implants could one day transform how we restore missing teeth—making artificial teeth not just look and chew like real ones, but feel like them too.
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The research findings can be found in Scientific Reports.
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