Abstract This paper presents a short review of three groups of tools which can be or are used for the tissue engineering of mineralized oral structures: growth factor delivery systems (GFDS) and surface bioactivation with covalent bound peptides or with nanomechanically linked proteins. According to the reported personal expe- rience of the authors, GFDS have to face the following challenging issue before being used routinely in dentist- ry, e.g., as a tool for reparative dentinogenesis or bone healing: adaptation of the GFDS design to the tissue where it will be implanted in order to deliver the right dose of growth factor (GF) at the right time. The bioacti- vation of surfaces, for example of dental implants, with covalent bound peptides or nanomechanically linked proteins represents a second innovative way to improve dental health in the future. Here we report on the experi- mental use of cyclic RGD peptides grafted on polymeth- ylmethacrylate to improve osteoblast adhesion. Further- more, we show the potential advantage of immobilizing and incorporating collagen I on titanium implant surfac- es. These techniques or a combination of them will help to create improvements, for example, of dental implants in the near future. They will also help to promote bone and dentin regeneration. Key words Tissue engineering · Growth factors · Peptides · Proteins · Dental Introduction Tissue engineering is strongly emerging as a new entity in medical research. There are great expectations and hopes that the related concepts and technologies will soon bring improvements to human health care. As this new field extends from gene expression research over surgical techniques to cell biology, biomaterial science, chemistry, etc., the challenges considerably exceed the current knowledge, even that being acquired through in- terdisciplinary approaches. Among other attributes, tissue engineering should help patients in regeneration of all oral structures, in- cluding teeth and periodontal ligament; but our limited knowledge and number of tools restrain further ambi- tions concerning bone, dentin, and gingiva. The aim of the present paper is mainly to report on tools under de- velopment for in vivo tissue regeneration. In the near fu- ture, these tools should offer innovative treatments for patients afflicted with oral diseases. Disruption or interruption of cell-cell or cell-extracel- lular-matrix (ECM) communications is one of the main reasons for oral diseases and disabilities and also the pa- rameter which macroscopically or microscopically char- acterizes the defect. That is why we focused our activity on conceiving and developing tools with the ability to improve cell-cell or ECM relationships. In order to simplify our presentation, we would agree that there exist two major levels of cell–cell or ECM communications: the message in form of cytokines or growth factors and the coating of surfaces with peptides or proteins. Growth factor delivery systems Nowadays, we know that the formation and regeneration of bone and dentin are controlled by cells whose activity is regulated by cytokines and growth factors (GFs) [4]. The GFs most often studied in bone behavior are trans- forming growth factor β (TGF-β), bone morphogenetic M. Dard ( ✉ ) · A. Sewing · J. Meyer Merck Biomaterial, Frankfurter Strasse 250, 64271 Darmstadt, Germany Tel.: +49-6151-726628, Fax: +49-6151-723151 S. Verrier INSERM U443, Bordeaux, France S. Roessler · D. Scharnweber Technical University, Dresden, Germany Clin Oral Invest (2000) 4:126–129 © Springer-Verlag 2000 ORIGINAL ARTICLE M. Dard · A. Sewing · J. Meyer · S. Verrier S. Roessler · D. Scharnweber Tools for tissue engineering of mineralized oral structures Received: 12 October 1999 / Accepted: 15 March 2000