School of Dentistry seminar series: Regenerative Dentistry and Tissue Engineering - Professor Alastair Sloan

Alastair obtained his BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Wales in 1993 and his PhD in Oral Biology and Pathology from The University of Birmingham, UK in 1997 in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. Following postdoctoral research he was appointed to a Lectureship in Oral Biology at the School of Dentistry in The University of Birmingham in 2000.

In 2005, he moved to the School of Dentistry, Cardiff University and was awarded his personal chair in 2012. He was Head of Oral and Biomedical Sciences at the School of Dentistry between 2010-2015, Director of International (2012-2015) and Director of Research (2015-2017). Between 2015-2017 he was Chair/Director of the Cardiff Institute for Tissue Engineering and Repair (CITER), a cross-University research network. He was appointed Head of School in 2017, a post which he held until January 2020 when he relocated to The University of Melbourne to take up his present role as Head of School of the Melbourne Dental School. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB). In 2020 he was elected Honorary Fellow of the International College of Dentists (FICD) and in 2021 awarded an Ad Eundem Fellowship of the Faculty of Dentistry Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland in recognition of his contribution to dental education and research. He was the recipient of the 2021 International Association for Dental Research Distinguished Scientist Award, The Isaac Schour Memorial Award for his research programmes in tissue engineering and stem cells.

Alastair's research is multi-disciplinary and in the broad field of mineralised connective tissues. He is interested in the reparative potential and behaviour of the dentine-pulp complex and bone, specifically the potential therapeutic manipulation of the dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) and the cellular and molecular responses of these cells to natural biomatrices and compromised biological environments to understand their functional behaviour during tissue injury. Complimentary to this work he is also interested understanding the heterogeneity within dental pulp progenitor populations and their function in 3D environments in vitro. In addition, he is interested in the potential therapeutic roles of these DPSCs in the wider context of regenerative biology.

His research is also focused on understanding the dentinogenic and osteoinductive properties of dentine and bone matrices to facilitate novel tissue engineering methodologies and natural regenerative processes and is related to the development of novel clinical therapies and methods in relation to dentistry and orthopaedics regarding tissue regeneration and repair. Directly related to this, his research is also focused on understanding bacterial invasion and attachment in dental and bone infections and development of novel antimicrobial carriers / restorative materials for clinical endodontics and orthopaedics. His group have established liposomal nanocarriers for antimicrobial delivery and prototype restorative materials and model systems to better understand the nature of the bacterial / pulp environment during pulpal infection. He also has a long standing interest in developing novel in vitro / ex vivo organ 3D culture model systems for mineralising tissues to provide innovative models for tissue regeneration/engineering and testing of novel therapeutic agents and advancing the 3Rs (reduction, replacement refinement) in biomedical research and bioengineering.

View Professor Sloan's seminar on YouTube.