Two McGill Dentistry teams are working on getting their products to market. Assistant Professor Dr. Faleh Tamimi and his team and Postdoctoral fellow Dr. Ashwaq Al-Hashedi presented their projects at this year McGill Dobson Cup, an annual startup competition for the McGill community. Dr. Al-Hashedi will continue on to the final round of the competition. The fruits of seven years of research work, Dr. Al-Hashedi’s company 2D-CrystaLab manufactures a toothpaste (2D-Implantcare) specifically designed for cleaning dental implants. While working in Dr. Faleh Tamimi’s lab (Tamimi is a co-founder for the company) Dr. Al-Hashedi collaborated with labs and Harvard University and the Université de Montréal to create her product. The McGill Dobson cup allowed her the opportunity to present her work and hopefully obtain a cash prize to help her take it to market. The toothpaste is bio-compatible, abrasive- and fluoride-free and prevents scratching delicate metal surfaces like Titanium. The toothpaste is developed from a new nano-crystalline material that has not been made before because it requires a special synthesis and manufacturing process, which enables these crystals and ions to form a gel. This work is protected by a patent application and has been published in the journal Nano Letters. Dr. Faleh Tamimi along with team members Dr. Haider Al-Waeli (PhD candidate, Faculty of Dentistry), Dr. Mohamed-Nur Abdallah (Postdoctoral fellow, McGill University), Dr. Kelvin I. Afrashtehfar (Visiting Clinical Research Fellow, University of Bern) and Francisco Berrizbeitia (Concordia University) presented their company EBHnow. EBHnow is a website that offers easy, instant and free access to evidence‐based healthcare information to Healthcare professionals, researchers, companies and patients, thus making evidence‐based healthcare a reality. Through the catalogue of online applications users can make decisions based on research findings. The online platform is the fruits of a collaboration between researchers and programmers and is currently being used worldwide by dentists to choose the best treatment. Each year McGill startups across 4 tracks — Innovation Driven Enterprise, Small & Medium Enterprise, Social Enterprise, and Health Sciences — have the opportunity to compete for over $100,000 in cash prizes, awarded as seed funding to the most promising companies. The finals will take place on March 22. For further reading: Full list of Finalists – Who will bring home the McGill Dobson Cup 2017? Full list of Semi-Finalist – Could this be the next big startup out of Montreal?
Pictured:
Top: Team 2D-Crystalab, Bottom: Team EBHnow.com