Prospective and applications of bacterial nanocellulose in dentistry

Bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) possesses unique properties that make it an appealing biomaterial for various biomedical applications. However, its potential in dentistry has not been broadly investigated. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the potential applications of BNC in dentistry, including the design of implants, scaffolds, wound dressing materials, oral and bone tissue repair, drug delivery systems, and antimicrobial BNC composites. BNC has emerged as a promising biomaterial for various applications in dentistry. Benefiting from its numerous properties, BNC is widely used in hard and soft tissue engineering, particularly in the design of scaffolds, implants, and membranes. Additionally, BNC is suitable as a wound dressing for wounds, including intraoral lesions such as aphthous stomatitis and other mucosal ulcers. Furthermore, BNC can be employed in drug delivery systems. BNC's use in performing surgical and endodontic treatments, as well as in manufacturing nanocomposites that promote bone mineralization in the dental periapical area, guided bone regeneration (GBR), and periodontal scaffolds and membranes, has been limited. Moreover, BNC has been applied to improve dental material characteristics and silicate cements leading to the development of practical, novel composites in this field. In addition to these application areas, future research could consider the development of antibaterial composites using BNC and the execution of clinical trials assessing their role as adjunctive treatments for periodontal diseases in dentistry.