Dental fillings aren’t a pleasant way to fix cavities but they’re necessary to fill holes and prevent further damage. But now a research team at the University of Nottingham in the UK is working on a gel that could help prevent tooth decay and regenerate damaged tooth enamel.

According to research published in the journal Nature Communications this month, the gel works by containing a modified version of amelogenin, a protein that helps guide the growth of enamel in infants. The gel fills holes and cracks in the teeth when applied.

«The gel was able to grow crystals epitaxially, which means it’s in the same crystallographic orientation as existing enamel,» Alvaro Mata, a professor in Biomedical Engineering and Biomaterials at the University of Nottingham, told New Scientist.

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Enamel is the hard layer of the tooth that shields the softer inner layers from damage caused by general wear and tear, acid and bacteria. Tooth decay happens when the enamel layer breaks down. Enamel doesn’t regenerate naturally, and while fluoride treatment and remineralization toothpaste that uses nano-hydroxyapatite can offer a temporary fix, they aren’t a permanent solution, unlike getting a dental filling.

The new gel creates a thin yet durable layer that adheres to the teeth for several weeks, using calcium and phosphate to stimulate the growth of new crystals in the enamel. In a separate email interview with CNET Mata explained how long he expects the gel to last. «The gel is biodegradable and the process to remineralize takes approximately two weeks.It is applied once, and it will endure as native enamel would, depending on people’s health habits.» 

Research shows it works on heavily damaged enamel 

«Dental enamel has a unique structure, which gives enamel its remarkable properties that protect our teeth throughout life against physical, chemical and thermal insults,» said Dr. Abshar Hasan, a postdoctoral fellow and leading author of the study. «When our material is applied to demineralized or eroded enamel, or exposed dentine, the material promotes the growth of crystals in an integrated and organized manner, recovering the architecture of our natural, healthy enamel.»

This process was effective even when the enamel was severely worn and the dentine below was exposed, according to the research. 

«If used as a preventive solution, it can avoid getting to the dental filling stage,» said Mata. «In a way, it needs to be managed as a chronic disease where patients need to start at home with more education and care. Having said this, we have been working on this for 16 years, which has allowed us to develop quite a bit of know-how to understand, control and shape the technology. Because of this, we now have a versatile technology that will derive into multiple types of products. I believe that in the future, dental fillings will be a possibility.» 

Mata says he’s «very excited because the technology has been designed with the clinician and patient in mind. It is safe, can be easily and rapidly applied, and it is scalable.» He’s started a startup called Mintech-Bio and hopes to have the first product out next year, according to New Scientist, following the clinical trial. 

Dentists are cautiously optimistic

CNET reached out to several dentists to get their perspective on the gel.   

Bianca Velayo, general dentist in Henderson, Nevada, and multi-practice owner at PDS Health, was cautious about the timeline. 

«Dental materials like this rarely hit the market overnight, even with exciting results,» she says. «After early lab success, the real test is how it performs in the human mouth under real-world conditions: heat, saliva, bacteria, diet and daily habits. Between lab research, multiple trial phases and regulatory approval, it usually takes 5 to 10 years before we’d see a material like this in everyday dental use.»

However, Velayo also says she’s excited about the prospect of these replacing traditional dental fillings in the future. 

«This gel hints at the future of dentistry, where we could actually regrow what’s been lost. It’s the difference between repairing and truly healing the tooth,» she says.

Another dentist and multi-practice owner at PDS Health, Ahmad Mokbil, said that the treatment has potential but he doesn’t believe it’ll be possible anytime soon, as it requires a shift in educating patients, dentists, dental coverage and treatment protocols. However, he pointed to existing technology that’s in use. 

«We use an FDA-approved treatment called Curodont, which has similar characteristics and is effective for treating early tooth decay,» Mokbil says. «The number of applications required can vary depending on how the tooth responds, the size of the cavity and how early the intervention takes place.»

Imagine, if you will, a Steam Deck and a VR headset combining into a new gaming life form — part Meta Quest, part handheld game system. As I slid the Steam Frame over my eyes and my hands into the controller, that’s exactly what I felt.

The Steam Frame is a new VR headset by gaming giant Valve, the company behind the Steam platform, but it wasn’t the only new piece of hardware I tested during the course of a few hours at Valve’s HQ. There’s also the Steam Machine, a console-sized PC designed to connect to a television, and the Steam Controller. These three new devices are designed to work together as a complete ecosystem.

All three pieces of the new Steam gaming hardware will be available in early 2026, though pricing hasn’t been announced. I was among a small group of journalists invited to experience them for the first time, and I came away with some answers, and a few questions.

First off, none of these devices is a new Steam Deck, one of the best handheld game consoles. I don’t expect Valve to announce the next Steam Deck in 2026, and company representatives I asked gave me no reason to think otherwise. And the Steam Machine doesn’t seem to be a direct Xbox or PlayStation competitor, either. Seen as a whole, all three new Valve gadgets push the idea of PC gaming in novel directions. And based on Valve’s history of hardware launches, their tech could eventually appear in third-party products, too.

Steam Frame, a standalone VR headset, captured my excitement the most. It’s been six years since the Valve Index debuted in 2019, and rumors have been heating up recently. But Valve’s return to VR in 2026, amid a landscape full of AI and AR-infused mixed reality headsets and glasses, is quite different. Valve isn’t interested in AR right now, or AI for that matter. The Steam Frame is all about gaming. 

I also spent time with the cube-shaped, nearly console-like PC Valve called Steam Machine, playing games while connected to a TV. And I played using the new Steam Controller, a separately sold wireless controller with a set of Steam Deck-like controls and a new wireless protocol for connecting lag-free.

Let’s get even deeper into what impressed me, and what to expect from each product when they drop next year.

Steam Frame: A Steam Deck for your face

From the outside, nothing about the Steam Frame looks particularly unique. But it’s still wild to see Valve’s engineering team — led by designer Andrew Yang — unveil a sleek black VR headset and controllers that work on their own, just like Meta’s Quest, Apple’s Vision Pro, and Samsung Galaxy XR. But the Steam Frame is none of those things. I think of it as a Steam Deck for your face. Valve is quick to point out that the device’s biggest strength is running SteamOS on an ARM chip in this form. That means you can load your Steam game library directly onto it from a PC via a MicroSD card and start playing both VR and non-VR games on the go, or use the Steam Frame to wirelessly stream from your PC at home.

«We see it as kind of a fundamental shift in the way that we’re looking at VR,» Yang told me as I put Steam Frame on my head. «We see Steam Frame as a a new way to play your entire Steam library — not just your VR titles, but also your non-VR titles.»

The Steam Frame is Valve’s first move to put SteamOS on an ARM processor. It doesn’t have Qualcomm’s VR-focused XR2 chip, but instead uses a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 ARM64 chip with 16GB of RAM. It could be a new way to play a ton of games on other standalone hardware, VR and otherwise.

The two-piece design of the headset has the computing and lenses up front with a foam face piece, and a 21 watt-hour rechargeable battery pack in the back that’s connected by a cable and flexible head strap. Valve didn’t confirm specific battery life, claiming a range based on performance. I’d expect something between a Meta Quest and a first-gen Steam Deck (two to three hours), but I’m curious. There’s support for prescription lens inserts, but my high index option wasn’t available at the demo, so I had to squeeze my glasses in. They fit, but just barely.

The wide field of view (110 degrees) and LCD display (2,160 x 2,160 pixels per eye resolution) looked good — about equivalent to Quest 3. The clear pancake lenses made everything look vivid and unmuddied. It can run games up to 120 Hz, or even an experimental 144 Hz. Built-in audio via speakers in the front were loud, too, but you can also use wireless headphones. The Stream Frame has passthrough cameras to track movement (including in the dark with infrared) and can see via black-and-white passthrough. It’s not meant for mixed reality, but rather to help you easily create and see your play boundaries.

The controllers are awfully familiar, with a button and stick and dual-trigger layout similar to the Quest. But there’s a twist: four buttons on the right controller, and a d-pad on the left. It mirrors the Steam Deck’s design, minus the trackpads.

While a d-pad doesn’t seem ideal for VR games, it’s perfectly suited for any games in SteamOS that use Valve’s existing controller mappings. Steam games can run on this whether they’re VR or not.

Steam Frame’s PC-connected VR streaming

But the Frame isn’t just standalone; it’s designed to work with PCs, too. Valve sees the Frame as a mix between a wireless and standalone device, and its new wireless tech looks really promising. It uses a new 6 GHz-based protocol with a dongle you plug into your PC. It can stream faster than standard wireless Steam Link without taxing the local Wi-Fi or needing any cloud services. 

The Frame also has eye tracking cameras that even worked through my glasses. They aren’t used for control, but instead for foveated rendering and streaming. Foveated rendering sharpens the visuals where your eyes are focused and reduces resolution in your peripheral vision, without you noticing. But the Frame does this for streaming PC games in VR, which Valve calls foveated streaming. It reduces the load on the wireless connection, improving overall stream quality — something I’ve never seen before. Again, it happens invisibly. Playing Half-Life: Alyx streamed from a PC, I’d have never know the edges of my field of view were lower res.

I played a PC VR game called Ghost Town on Steam Frame for a little bit, wandering the deck of a ship. I also played Hades 2, stretched across an adjustable big screen floating in front of me. Both were x86 versions of the games, running in standalone mode.

Valve’s Yang emphasized that, yes, you can transfer games right off your PC and play them on Frame, including classic early-gen SteamVR games I can’t find on Quest (I’m looking at you, Adventure Time: Magic Man’s Head Games). There’s a microSD card slot on Steam Frame for expanded storage, plus an included 256GB or 1TB of space onboard.

Not all the Deck-verified games are instantly going to play on the ARM chipset. Yang said verification for the Frame will take time, as individual games are optimized for the new chipset. Valve uses an algorithm that factors in customer interest from wish lists and purchases to decide which games to prioritize, though the process for selecting titles to optimize for the Frame is still being refined.

I was surprised Valve hadn’t released a standalone version of Half-Life: Alyx for the Steam Frame. When I asked if it was coming, it sounded like Valve is exploring whether that could happen.

But what’s even more intriguing is that other Android VR games could run on Steam Frame, even ones for Android XR. «We would treat it as another one of those things to plug in,» said Jeremy Selan, a hardware/software engineer at Valve. «As Android XR becomes a richer, fuller fleshed out set of APIs and programs, and there’s content to support it, we could easily add support for that to SteamOS itself.»

Other expansions could come with a custom port in the front of the headset, which Valve hints could be for high-speed cameras.

It certainly feels like Steam Frame is a stepping stone towards ideas for a future Steam Deck, one that could work with XR glasses and connect via streaming with TV consoles and headsets. «It’s not inconceivable to think that even these products would be a part of that ecosystem dream you just laid out,» Valve’s Selan said when I ask about this.

Steam Machine and Steam Controller: PC gaming on a TV

I also demoed two non-VR devices at Valve’s HQ. The Steam Machine is a black cube about the size of a game console, something that you could easily park in front of a TV. It’s a full gaming PC that can stream wirelessly to Steam Frame, or it can simply be something you play instead of an Xbox or PlayStation. I sat down on a sofa to try out some familiar games, and I was handed a new Steam Controller to play with.

The Steam Machine is a return to a concept first introduced a decade ago. The Alienware Steam Machine in 2015 attempted to create an ecosystem of console-sized (and priced) PC game consoles. Unfortunately, its odd controller, with trackpads instead of thumbsticks, was an unwelcome shift from the rest of the PC universe.

The new Steam Machine coming in 2026 brings an infusion of Steam Deck-provided confidence, both in game compatibility and controller design. Valve says the Steam Machine is six times more graphically powerful than the three-and-a-half-year-old Steam Deck but wouldn’t share specifics beyond a few specs. The Steam Machine has a semi-custom AMD-based Zen 4 CPU and AMD RDNA3 28CUs GPU, capable of 4K 60 frames per second gaming and ray tracing. 

Meanwhile, the new Steam Controller has a full set of controls that mirror the Steam Deck’s, including analog sticks, d-pad and buttons, dual trackpads and dual triggers. It even has gyro-based controls that can be triggered by lightly touching the capacitive-touch analog sticks or rear grip buttons. I loved how it felt to hold, and I found the layout of buttons pretty reasonable to reach with my thumbs (although the angled touchpads took some getting used to). 

The Steam Machine will be available both with and without the Steam Controller. Since it’s a Steam-based PC, you can use any controller you like, but the Steam Controller’s unique features are certainly a welcome addition.

The Steam Machine has support for a new wireless protocol in the controllers: a 2.4 GHz radio that bypasses standard Bluetooth for better responsiveness. The Hall-effect magnetic analog sticks have smaller dead zones than Steam Deck, meaning you could set up even more micro-responsive thumb flick moves, and the vibrating haptics are stronger. The Steam Controller works with other PCs, too, via a wireless dongle cable that also doubles as a magnetic controller charger — a clever touch. 

I didn’t get to play many games on Steam Machine — Valve only had a handful to try — but I found the early performance hit and miss. Less graphically intense games such as Balatro and Hollow Knight: Silksong seemed totally fine, as I expected. Cyberpunk 2077, during the short time I played, looked good, too. On the other hand, Silent Hill had some graphic stutters, which Valve’s team says should be fixed in later game updates. Sonic Racing: Crossworlds had graphics performance issues as well.

Valve noted that in the early days of the Steam Deck, few games in the Steam library were optimized to run on it, but that changed as the library grew over time. The Steam Machine isn’t arriving until next year, so I’m curious to see how it performs then. Ultimately, price and performance will determine whether the Steam Machine feels like a success or a flop.

But I do love the design of the compact system. In a cool twist, it has has removable magnetic faceplates — I saw one of Heavy, my older son’s favorite character from Team Fortress 2, holding a balloon — and an LED bar on the bottom of the system that lights up and shows some animated progress bars for downloads.

I really like the controllers, which are cross-compatible with both the Steam Deck and Steam Frame. When paired with a docked Steam Deck, they make TV-connected play feel much better, closer to the experience of using a Nintendo Switch. They can even power on the Steam Machine or a docked Steam Deck.

Is this the sign of gaming ecosystems to come?

As I tried all these demos, I couldn’t help but wonder what they meant for gaming as a whole. Is Valve offering a glimpse of the future, one where our PCs, accessories and headsets are all interconnected? Or is the company deconstructing the PC itself, expanding SteamOS even further across handhelds, consoles, headsets and beyond? Maybe it’s all of the above, not so much a single product as a philosophy of interconnection.

And the crucial question: What will all of this cost when it arrives in early 2026? Valve’s team said it’s still working out pricing details and offered no hints about what any of it might cost.

The game console landscape is already in a strange, transitional place. Microsoft is embracing an «Xbox everywhere» approach, and PlayStation is experimenting with streaming handhelds and VR headsets. Nintendo’s Switch 2 is already modular. Valve looks to be taking that multi-device flexibility to Steam in a bunch of new ways, tackling everything in 2026… except the Steam Deck. 

It sounds like Valve plans for the technologies in the Steam Machine and Steam Frame to extend to third-party products as well as its own. After all, SteamOS already runs on several Windows handhelds, and Steam Link for VR works on both Quest and PlayStation VR. With the new Steam Machine, Steam Frame and Steam Controller, Valve seems to be triangulating something new —  an exploded-out Steam Deck-esque space for Steam games. 

Steam Deck won me over even though I’m not a PC gamer, and Steam Frame shows the same promise for VR. But the biggest missing piece — a new next-gen Steam Deck to tie it all together — still looms large. 

Valve acknowledges the growing interest in a new Steam Deck but says it wants to wait until the hardware can deliver a true leap forward before releasing a sequel. Maybe gaming handhelds just aren’t there yet.   

In the meantime, I can’t wait to see whether the Steam Machine will actually be a PC console that works for me. And I’m even more curious to find out if the Steam Frame could be the first true challenger to the Meta Quest. The thing is, we just won’t know until 2026.