Cell nutriments and motility for mechanobiological bone remodeling in the context of orthodontic periodontal ligament deformation

Abstract

Bone remodeling is a complex phenomenon during which old and new bone is continuously removed and replaced. This phenomenon involves several processes at different length scales such as mechanical, biological, molecular, and chemicals. In the current work, we study the influence of the biological (cells) and molecular (oxygen and glucose) factors coupled with mechanical loads in order to predict bone remodeling for orthodontic treatments. A coupled theoretical mechanobiological model is proposed to extract the oxygen variation due to the deformation of the periodontal ligament leading to cell differentiation and activation. The mechanobiological stimulus is then calculated. The model is applied on a simplified two dimensional geometry to highlight the density variations and migrations of cells and molecular factors influencing the bone remodeling process.