Ms Rafferty, what brought about you to broaden Toothboost?
As a dental hygienist, I used to be mindful that we give our sufferers 3 key messages: brush two times an afternoon, blank interdentally and scale back sugar consumption. Alternatively, what I used to be seeing in follow used to be the affect of sufferers’ day-to-day life—what they have been consuming and ingesting and, importantly, what came about between brushings.
That raised the query of why I didn’t have a product to suggest to sufferers to improve their oral care between brushings, specifically when their tooth are extra susceptible after eating espresso, lunch or a sports activities drink. This ended in the theory of creating an oral mist. Our number one intention used to be to create a product that might improve remineralisation of the teeth floor following an acidic problem and assist repair oral homeostasis through supporting saliva’s herbal protecting purposes. We thus created a glycoprotein-based components incorporating an aspect now not in the past utilized in oral care.
How did you manner the components building, and the way has the product portfolio advanced since then?
Once I began creating the product, I had no enjoy in components building, patents or regulatory approval. It used to be like opening a fully new bankruptcy. We have been lucky to search out a very good components specialist to paintings with us: Dr Richard Willson, director of Modus Laboratories. He has greater than 20 years of enjoy in components building, a lot of which he received at what used to be then GlaxoSmithKline as a formulator and investigator, and he used to be a part of the staff keen on creating Sensodyne Pronamel.
We labored with him at his laboratory in Plymouth in the United Kingdom, the place he started creating the components the use of a unique glycoprotein and a dairy-derived phosphopeptide. We to begin with included those elements into an oral mist and due to this fact expanded the portfolio to incorporate toothpaste, mouthwash and, maximum just lately, dissolving polymer strips, which might be identical in look to teeth whitening strips however are designed to ship our key elements.
What comments did you obtain from preliminary customers, and the way did it tell your next analysis?
During the components building procedure, we all the time saved sufferers and customers in thoughts since the concept originated from an unmet want I had recognized in medical follow. After we had early samples, we allotted them to buddies, members of the family and, most significantly, dental colleagues. Till then, our analysis were carried out in vitro, so this gave us a chance to collect comments from folks the use of the product.
