SmileSonica’s Cristian Scurtescu is going where few engineers have gone before: dentistry
by Mike Sadava
Cristian Scurtescu has never found anything he couldn’t fix.
When he was 13, growing up in a small city outside Bucharest, Romania, the Soviet-made motorcycle his dad bought for him broke down, and he couldn’t get parts. So he made some, and overhauled the machine to run better than new. By the time he was 15, Scurtescu was repairing everything in his family’s apartment, including the heating and electrical system. He made his first car, a beater Renault, into a vehicle that ran like a BMW and even had heated seats.
But he also excelled at the theory taught in school and university. In the final year of his undergraduate degree in Bucharest, he graduated with a 100% average. Still, theory only served as the backdrop to realizing his future ambitions. Between a professor of microelectronics who kept him involved in practical projects and a full-time job with O2Micro, a multinational electronics firm (the two combined making for 14-hour days, with weekends reserved for writing research papers), he managed to stay fully engaged with hands-on applications. “If I look back, probably it was hard,” says Scurtescu. “But I had fun.”
Coming to Canada roughly five years ago to expand his horizons, he translated those experiences into eventually earning a master of science in electrical engineering at the University of Alberta. It was here that his innate desire to fix stuff pushed him to take research out of the ivory tower and into the real world of practical applications. As a result, Scurtescu has made the leap from academia to business. With his award-winning startup company, SmileSonica Inc., this 30-year-old has embarked on commercializing a groundbreaking product that could soon do a lot of fixing – of teeth.
As he was wrapping up his master’s, Scurtescu was invited to join a research team from the departments of electrical engineering and dentistry that was focused on the use of ultrasound to stimulate regeneration of damaged and shortened tooth roots. Besides its applications in medical imaging and prenatal care, ultrasound is used to help repair damaged muscles and bones, but in dentistry this was the first time it would be applied to anything other than cleaning teeth. As Scurtescu finished his degree, he started working with engineers on developing a prototype of a compact commercial unit, and he became the liaison between the dentists and the engineers.
He has been well aware that a lot of research stays in the lab and never sees the light of day. But with entrepreneurial instincts honed by his stint with O2Micro back in Bucharest, Scurtescu was determined not to let this happen. “In early 2008 I realized that the project had much more potential than just a research project. This can be a commercial product, but… I have to build a business and adapt to commercial reality,” he recalls thinking. “I have to take it to the next phase.” In other words, he’d have to develop it into something everyone could use. The U of A was willing to license the technology, and he started SmileSonica.
So far the prototype (still being refined) consists of a controller resembling a slightly oversized iPod, which is wired to a tooth mould with embedded sensors. When it operates, the device directs a dose of ultrasound waves to the desired part of the mouth. A dentist or orthodontist would program the device, but the patient would be able to take it home and operate it, wearing it for 20 minutes a day to repair roots.
Tarek El-Bialy, associate professor at the U of A’s department of dentistry, has documented regrowth in the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics. El-Bialy, also a practising orthodontist, says it was an accidental discovery made through researching the effects of ultrasound on the jawbones of rabbits. But in some human patients, root damage is an unintended consequence of wearing braces. When braces move teeth, that encourages the generation of new bone cells, but these new bone cells start eating away at teeth roots, El Bialy says.
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