To a small extent, our teeth can bed with the help remineralise of saliva, fluoride toothpaste and drinking water additives. But once there's a visible cavity on the tooth, it needs to be treated by a dentist - which usually means drilling, and packing the hole with a dental filling. To develop their new treatment, the team turned to one of the proteins produced by ameloblasts. 

They applied it to dental lesions in a laboratory setting and found that it helped form a new mineralised layer to the demineralised areas, integrating it with the enamel underneath. They also treated similar lesions with fluoride, but only the peptide treatment resulted in the remineralisation of a relatively thick layer - resembling the structure of healthy enamel.