Lantis Laser Inc. announced yesterday that it will form HyGeniLase Inc., a joint venture with Laser Energetics Inc. Each laser company will own half of the new business, which they said will market a dental instrument that uses a laser to painlessly remove plaque and tartar without touching teeth. Under the terms of the agreement, HyGeniLase will have exclusive rights for dental applications of Laser Energetics' conductively cooled BrightStar Alexandrite laser technology. HyGeniLase has ordered an Alexandrite research laser from Mercerville, N.J.-based Laser Energetics, as well as a cost-effectiveness manufacturing study of the dental market and a pre-production Alexandrite laser system mounted in a mobile cart for the dental application. "The primary cause of periodontal disease is plaque and calculus (tartar) matrix that adheres to the teeth above and below the gumline. HyGeniLase's new Alexandrite laser scaling technology will allow effortless removal of dental plaque and calculus (tartar) without touching the tooth and with no discomfort, pressure or vibration," said Dr. Craig Gimbel, vice president of clinical affairs at Lantis, which is based in Denville. "Alexandrite laser plaque and calculus removal will lead to greater acceptance of this procedure by fearful patients. Many people put off dental scaling for fear of the sometimes painful discomfort." HyGeniLase will trade as a separate public entity, the companies said. Its market capitalization will be directly reflected in Lantis' stock price, as 50 percent owner of HyGeniLase. Lantis also said it plans to launch its OCT (optical coherence tomography) dental imaging system in the third quarter of 2008 as its first product. It has exclusive rights to OCT technology for dentistry applications under license agreements with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and LightLab Imaging. OCT was invented in the early 1990s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is being commercialized by Carl Zeiss Meditec Inc. in ophthalmology and by LightLab Imaging for cardiovascular imaging. For more information, visit: www.lantislaser.com or www.laserenergetics.com