Spire Biomedical, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Spire Corporation (Nasdaq: SPIR), announced today that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), has awarded Spire a nine-month Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I Grant for $114,173, to develop coatings for dental arch wires used in orthodontics. The purpose of the coatings is to reduce sliding resistance between the arch wire and bracket, lowering the force required to straighten teeth, reducing treatment times, and resulting in more predictable outcomes for the orthodontist.
"Spire Biomedical provides surface treatment and coating services to the medical device industry," said Mark C. Little, CEO of Spire Biomedical. "We currently process hundreds of thousands of dental arch wires every year with our IonGuard® process. This grant will help us to develop next-generation ceramic oxide coatings that promise even greater performance. The coatings will effectively decouple sliding resistance from other mechanical properties of the arch wire, providing the practitioner with new tools for solving specific patient problems. The program is targeting improved performance in nickel-titanium and titanium-molybdenum alloy wires, but the coatings should be applicable to other types of wires as well."
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