Stella Alimperti
Georgetown University, DC·Biomedical Engineering
Dental implants replace missing teeth for many people, but about one in five recipients develop inflammation around the implant that can damage the surrounding gum and bone. The same kind of breakdown happens in periodontitis, a common gum disease.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Medicine & Clinical Research
Biology
- Topics
peri-implantitis
periodontitis
dental implants
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through May 2031
What they work on
- Test how implant-derived titanium particles and bacterial LPS weaken gum blood-vessel barriers through TLR4 (a bacterial sensor) and VEGF (a vessel-loosening signal) passed between fibroblasts and endothelial cells, using a 3D gingival microfluidic system.
- Determine how Connexin 43, a protein that connects neighboring cells, controls the leakiness of gum blood vessels through contacts between the same or different cell types.
- Examine whether titanium particles make gum blood vessels leaky, inflamed and altered in cell-adhesion proteins, using a rat peri-implantitis model and tissue from human patients.
- Test how mechanical pressure strengthens the gum epithelial barrier and how E. coli LPS and F. nucleatum disrupt it through FOXO1, E-cadherin and β-catenin, using the Epi-oral culture platform.
- Determine how keratinocytes attached to titanium regulate their barrier under pressure or bacterial challenge, and use mice lacking FOXO1 or TLR4 in keratinocytes alongside patient gingiva to study tight-junction loss in disease.
More about the research
Both diseases begin when the body's protective barriers fail. One barrier is the sheet of cells lining the gums, and another is the lining of the tiny blood vessels inside them. This work asks how bacteria, mechanical forces and titanium from the implant itself weaken these barriers. It treats the gum as two connected problems: the surface epithelium (the outer cell layer) and the microvascular endothelium (the cell layer lining small blood vessels).
Why it matters
Peri-implantitis affects roughly 20% of people with dental implants, and periodontitis is a widespread cause of gum damage. This work identifies how bacteria and titanium particles from implants break down the gum's protective cell barriers. It may point to new treatment targets, including TLR4, VEGF, Cx43 and FOXO1. Understanding early vessel leakiness could also support earlier detection and intervention before tissue around implants is destroyed.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Tom Diekwisch
University of Rochester, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether peri-implantitis in a rat jaw implant model is driven by an inflammatory microenvironment and a rise in reactive oxygen species, damaging molecules that signal oxidative stress, around titanium implants.
Maribel Vazquez
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Biomedical Engineering
Examine how combined endothelial cell and Müller glia responses change cell growth, shape, tight junction protein expression, and barrier resistance and permeability in co-cultures that mimic the inner blood-retinal barrier.
Alex Valm
University at Albany, NY·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether long filamentous cells at the gum line bring plaque bacteria into contact with gum epithelium to start gingivitis, by imaging intact biofilms on extracted teeth with FISH probes for up to 18 bacterial types.
The school
Georgetown University: 14 labs on PI Pages, $377M a year on research, 206 research doctorates a year.
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