Biomaterials with antifungal strategies to fight oral infections

Abstract

Oral fungal infections pose a threat to human health and increase the economic burden of oral diseases by prolonging and complicating treatment. A cost-effective strategy is to try to prevent these infections from happening in the first place. With this purpose, biomaterials with antifungal properties are a crucial element to overcome fungal infections in the oral cavity. In this review, we go through different kinds of biomaterials and coatings that can be used to functionalize them. We also review their potential as a therapeutic approach in addition to prophylaxis, by going through traditional and alternative antifungal compounds, e.g., essential oils, that could be incorporated in them, to enhance their efficacy against fungal pathogens. We aim to highlight the potential of these technologies and propose questions that need to be addressed in prospective research. Finally, we intend to concatenate the key aspects and technologies on the use of biomaterials in oral health, to create an easy to find summary of the current state-of-the-art for researchers in the field.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Biomaterial
• oral infection
• fungal disease
• candidiasis
• drug resistance
• treatment
• oral biotechnology
• Candida
• biofilm

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Funding

L.Č. thanks the Slovak Research and Development Agency under Contract No. APVV-21-0302 and the Grant of VEGA 1/0537/19 from the Ministry of Education, Science, Research, and the Sport of the Slovak Republic and to the Operation Program of Integrated Infrastructure for the project, UpScale of Comenius University Capacities and Competence in Research, Development and Innovation, ITMS2014+: 313021BUZ3, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.