The Dean’s Club reception was held on April 15, 2019. Dr. Chris Barwacz, associate professor in the Department of Family Dentistry and the Craniofacial Clinical Research Program, received the James H. and Hermine E. McLeran Award because of his excellence as an educator and his commitment to patient-centered care.

To the right: Dr. Karin Weber-Gasparoni speaking at the reception.

 To the left: Fourth-year dental student Baily OBrien speaking at the reception.

Read more about Dr. Barwacz below:

Known as an outstanding clinical teacher and lecturer who is a role model for both predoctoral and graduate students in the college, Dr. Chris Barwacz has been teaching at the college for the past ten years. As an undergraduate (and throughout dental school), Dr. Barwacz was a research assistant in the laboratory of Dr. Stefan Strack, professor of neuroscience and pharmacology and associate chair for research.

After completing his D.D.S. at Iowa, he completed a residency in Advanced Education in General Dentistry at the Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas, Texas. He then returned to Iowa as a research fellow in oral implantology and clinical research for two years before becoming a visiting assistant professor, and later an assistant professor in the Department of Family Dentistry. In 2018, Dr. Barwacz was promoted to associate professor with tenure.

As an educator, Dr. Barwacz lectures in five predoctoral and five graduate courses. For first-year dental students, he teaches didactic courses in periodontal aesthetics, and for fourth-year dental students, he is instrumental in their training and clinical supervision as it pertains to the restorative component of dental implant therapy. At the graduate level, he created and teaches a new course aimed at meeting a specific accreditation standard on implant provisionalization for periodontics. He is also actively involved in mentoring student researchers, and in 2015, he was recognized by the Student Research Group as the Mentor of the Year.

Dr. Barwacz (shown speaking on the right) receives the most joy and satisfaction in observing fourth-year dental students grow and develop over the course of their last year of study and training. Their clinical and patient experiences over the course of the fourth year help them transition from often hesitant students who are completing initial comprehensive exams to confident and competent practitioners fully capable of making professional judgments and treatment plans for their patients independently.

“It is remarkable to see their progress over the course of the year, and it is particularly telling when you see the progress in reverse—seeing how skilled our graduates are by late spring, and then just weeks later seeing the incoming class start that process anew for themselves,” Dr. Barwacz explained.

During this process, Dr. Barwacz’s chief pedagogical goal is not only to educate his students, but to begin the process of treating his students like future colleagues, and part of that means guiding them to recognize when they should push beyond their comfort levels, while also identifying their own limits.

“Mutual respect is crucial to the teacher-student relationship; it is important to respect your students as future colleagues, to have high expectations of them, and help them become continual self-directed learners in the profession,” said Dr. Barwacz.

This relationship between the teacher and student carries over into how patients are treated.

“My highest aim is for our students to be interested in, empathetic toward, and to provide excellent outcomes for their patients as ethical and honest practitioners. To do that, I realize that I have to model that behavior directly with students and patients,” Dr. Barwacz added.

Dr. Barwacz is also active in the larger profession as an active member of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR), American Dental Association (ADA), and Iowa Dental Association (IDA). He is also a recognized fellow of the International College of Dentists (ICD) and the Academy of General Dentistry (AGD). Dr. Barwacz also serves on the Fellowship and Certificate Steering Committee for the Academy of Osseointegration (AO), of which he is an active member. Furthermore, this past summer, he was inducted into the National Dental Honor Society Omicron Kappa Upsilon. This is a very selective recognition, as our local chapter can only elect one full-time faculty member each year.

According to Dr. Gustavo Avila-Ortiz, professor and Department Executive Officer (DEO) of the Department of Periodontics, and Dr. David Holmes, professor and DEO of the Department of Family Dentistry, “Dr. Barwacz has proven his commitment to the mission of our College and his extraordinary skills as a teacher and as a health care provider. We cannot think of a more qualified individual than Dr. Barwacz to be the recipient of the 2019 James H. McLeran Faculty Award.”

Because of his excellence as an educator and commitment to patient-centered care, it is our great honor to award Dr. Christopher Barwacz the 2019 James H. and Hermine E. McLeran Faculty Award (shown with the award and Dean David Johnsen).

The National Institutes of Health awarded Dr. Huojun Cao, assistant professor in the Iowa Institute for Oral Health Research and the Department of Endodontics, a 2-year grant for his project, “Computational Method for Identification of Master Transcription Factors in Craniofacial Tissues.”

The long-term goal of Dr. Cao’s research is to identify master transcription factors that are responsible for craniofacial development. A master transcription factor is a gene that regulates other transcription factors and associated genes. Thus, a change in the master transcription factor can significantly alter the entire cell or tissue type, and it, therefore, shows great promise for regenerative medicine.

Nevertheless, it is cumbersome, costly, and difficult to identify master transcription factors using experimental methods. Dr. Cao’s team has developed the prediction tool MTFinder to provide a computational method for identifying these master transcription factors. MTFinder incorporates both transciptome and epigenome data within a Bayesian statistical model so that the tool can identify master transcription factors in an inexpensive, efficient, and comprehensive manner. In preliminary studies, the tool successfully ranked all known master transcription factors in mouse embryonic stem cells and liver hepatocytes. Dr. Cao is now expanding this work to systemically identify master transcription factors that control craniofacial development.

He has two aims in the project:

1. Evaluate and determine the optimal configuration of MTFinder in various cell/tissue-types.

2.  Identify MTFs for craniofacial tissues using MTFinder with FaceBase’s transcriptome and epigenome data.

The hope is that this line of work can properly identify master transcription factors for cell lineage reprogramming and thereby improve the prospect of regenerative medicine, disease modeling, and drug screenings among others.

Dr. Cao’s team includes Dr. Brad Amendt, Dr. Xian Jin Xie, and Dr. Shankar Rengasamy Venugopalan.

The National Institute of Nursing Research awarded Dr. Xi Chen, associate professor in preventive and community dentistry, a two-year R21 grant totaling over $426K for his project “Functionally-tailored Oral Care Intervention for Community-dwelling Older Adults with Dementia and Their Caregivers.”

Dr. Chen’s research project focuses on the oral health of older adults who have dementia and yet live in the community, rather than in a nursing home. These persons tend to have poor oral hygiene and a high risk of dental decay and other oral diseases, and their oral health declines can significantly diminish their overall health and well-being.

Dr. Chen said, “As a result of cognitive impairment, persons with dementia gradually lose their ability to perform oral self-care. They have to rely on caregivers for mouth care. However, the help from family caregivers is often limited because caregivers often don’t know how to assist their loved one, especially those with resistant behaviors. As a result, oral health is often poor in persons with dementia living in community, which can not only cause pain, infection and other systemic issues, but also make the relationship tense between caregivers and care recipients. We therefore want to develop a program to help these patients and their family caregivers.”

Dr. Chen’s prior research has investigated how oral-health interventions can improve overall health of older adults with dementia. With the support of his NIH K23 Career Development Award, Dr. Chen developed  “The Dental Activities Test”, which enables dental professionals to objectively evaluates the deterioration of oral self-care resulting from cognitive impairment. Together with his colleagues, Dr. Chen also developed the “Mouth Care Without A Battle”, which has become a standard oral hygiene protocol for residents of nursing homes in many states.

Based on his previous work, Dr. Chen’s current project will create an individualized oral hygiene intervention for community-dwelling persons with dementia and their caregivers, in order to improve oral health in persons with dementia, reduce oral care burden in family caregivers, and improve care partner relationships. The project has two specific aims:

1. Develop a staged and modifiable dyadic oral care intervention to provide functionally-tailored oral care rehabilitation for community-dwelling persons with dementia and need-based skills training their family caregivers.

2. Evaluate the feasibility and efficacy of the intervention in home settings through a randomized, controlled trial with 40 pairs of persons with dementia and their primary caregivers, including immediate post-intervention and 3-month follow-up.

Dr. Chen’s research team includes Dr. Xian Jin Xie from College of Dentistry, Dr. Sato Ashida from College of Public Health and Dr. Kristine Williams from the University of Kansas Medical Center.

The American Association of Orthodontists Foundation (AAOF) awarded Dr. Kyungsup Shin (Orthodontics) a $20K grant for his project “Fracture Energy Assessment Using CBCT: a pilot study for predicting risk of Post-Traumatic Craniofacial deformities.” Dr. Shin’s Co-Investigators are Dr. Donald Anderson (College of Medicine), Dr. Veeratrishul Allareddy (OPRM), and Dr. Xian Jin Xie (Biostatistics and Computational Biology).

Temporomandibular disorders are when injury or inflammation of the temporomandibular joint (the joint at the back of the jaw) causes pain in the area. About 60–70% of the general population are afflicted with the disorder, and it is particularly challenging to effectively treat without early diagnosis and treatment.

Dr. Shin’s project is investigating whether cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) can be used to determine how likely it is for disorders to develop as a result of a traumatic event. Post-traumatic osteoarthritis is one of the most challenging degenerative joint disorders, and the degree of trauma plays an important role in the development of the disorder.

Thus, Dr. Shin is using CBCT to determine the degree of trauma—that is, the objective fracture energy, and how that energy is distributed over different anatomical regions of the mandible. The method has been used previously in determining the fracture energy in long-bone (i.e., leg) fractures, and Dr. Shin believes it may be useful for trauma to the jaw as well.

He has two primary aims in this pilot study:

1. Validate the objective fracture energy scores computed from CBCT data.

2. Determine the association between fracture energy and anatomical regions of the mandible.

The ultimate aim is to develop a diagnostic tool for identifying the risk of developing a temporomandibular disorder, which can substantially improve early diagnosis and treatment.

“This study was initiated with dental student summer research and I acknowledge the hard work of Ms. Isabella Jasek and Mr. Ryan Mooneyham. I also thank the Student Research Program, including Dr. Teresa Marshall, Dr. Justine Kolker and Dr. Satheesh Elangovan for their support. With my co-investigators, I will work for successful completion of this study so that this can be another preliminary work for further scientific investigation.”  

Dr. Shin and the Department of Orthodontics also received another subcontract grant from the University of Alabama at Birmingham to continue studying “Anterior Openbite Malocclusions in Adults: Recommendations, Treatment, and Stability.”

Synthetic bone-graft substitutes are considered a promising alternative approach to current standard treatments for oral and craniofacial bone defects. MicroRNAs (miRs) are small, non-coding RNAs that have emerged as important transcriptional regulators in both physiologic and pathophysiological conditions. The findings from preliminary research demonstrate that great potential exists to develop novel therapeutics for bone regeneration of craniofacial and periodontal bone defects by targeting miRs, and miR-200a specifically.

The NaturemiRI, LLC R&D team has developed the Plasmid-based microRNA inhibitor system (PMIS), a non-toxic, nucleic acid-based method of microRNA inhibition. 

This particular research project is part of an overall series of projects intended to validate and commercialize a PMIS-infused collagen sponge for use in clinical dentistry. Specifically, Dr. Hong’s team expects to show that a PMIS construct inhibiting miR-200a (PMIS-miR-200a) promotes high-quality bone growth in the alveolar ridge of dental patients, thereby offering a new tool in the treatment of craniofacial defects and tooth extractions performed in anticipation of dental implantation.

The project has three primary aims:

1. To optimize the in vitro transfection efficiency and osteo-inductive capacity of PMIS-miR-200a from collagen sponges.
2. To determine in vivo osteoinductive capacity of PMIS-miR-200a adsorbed in collagen sponges.
3. To determine the toxicity risk of PMIS-miR-200a in vitro and in vivo.

Delta Dental has awarded two grants, totaling over $17,000 to the Department of Pediatric Dentistry and Dr. Kecia Leary.

The first, titled "University of Iowa College of Dentistry’s 2019 Students’ Oral Health Projects," in the amount of $13,776 is for several student groups, including the local AADR, the Hispanic Dental Association, the Student National Dental Association, the Pediatric Dentistry Club, and the Dental Public Health Club. The funds will be used to support student activities, such as providing reimbursement to the groups' invited speakers and support for their outreach activities.

The second, titled "Pediatric Dental Resident Outreach Project," in the amount of $3,500 is for pediatric dental outreach efforts in Forest City and Waukon. The funds will be used to help offset the expense of new equipment, a Nomad, that will be used for these outreach events. The equipment will allow pediatric residents to provide care in a more efficient manner to individuals in those communities. The remainder of the cost of the equipment is coming from the Pediatric Dentistry Excellence Fund. 

Dr. Fabricio Teixeira (DEO Endodontics) was invited to participate in an educational podcast centered on advancing the art and science of endodontics while promoting the highest standards of patient care. It’s called American Association of Endodontist’s Endo Voices and intends to update endodontists on the hottest topics and trends in the field. The first episodes were recorded live on the exhibit floor at AAE19 in Montréal and will be published for listening in July. 

The American Association of Orthodontists (AAO) awarded three prestigious $60,000 Faculty Fellowship Awards, and Dr. Kyungsup Shin and Dr. Shankar Rengasamy Venugopalan were honored to receive two of them after a national level review, based on their commitment to dental education and academics.

Given that there were only three awards given across North American, Dr. Tom Southard said that it was “amazing for two of Iowa’s faculty to receive them.”

These fellowships were instituted by the AAO in response to a 2015-2016 American Dental Education Association report that a large number of dental and dental specialty faculty are close to retirement. Thus, in 2018, the AAO 2018 House of Delegates reinstated the Faculty Fellowship Awards Program. Each award provides funding in an amount of $60,000 for two years.

Regarding the award, Dr. Shin said, “I am truly honored by this fellowship and attribute this to the support from our Department and the College of Dentistry. I will leverage this opportunity to become a dedicated educator and an excellent mentor in our specialty.”

Dr. Rengasamy Venugopalan added, “I am truly humbled to receive this fellowship award from the AAO. The biggest road block for pursuing an academic career in dentistry is the student loan burden. The AAO has done a commendable job in alleviating this burden by providing these fellowship awards. I am delighted and thrilled that two of these awards was given to our faculty. This award has given me a renewed hope to pursue bigger dreams in orthodontic education, research, and service.”

Many other specialty organizations have similar fellowship opportunities like this, and Dr. Shin and Dr. Rengasamy Venugopalan’s experiences show that many of our college’s faculty members would be competitive for those awards. Please reach out to Dr. Shin and Dr. Rengasamy Venugopalan if you are interested in applying for such an award within your specialty area.

On Tuesday, April 9, the College of Dentistry participated in the annual Hawkeye Caucus in Des Moines. It was a great opportunity to highlight to state legislators how vital the College of Dentistry is to the State of Iowa and how important Iowa is to the college. In particular:

• Nearly 80% of Iowa's dentists are alumni of the University of Iowa College of Dentistry delivering over $800 million in oral health care services to Iowans annually.
• An estimated 99% of Iowans are within a 30-minute drive of a practicing University of Iowa alumnus.

Photo were taken by Justin Torner and Ann Synan.

For each month spent on the International Space Station, an astronaut will lose approximately one to two percent of bone mass. Since the skeleton is not being used to support the full weight of the body, the bones weaken and lose mass and density. When a bone is not being properly stimulated, it usually undergoes disuse atrophy and subsequently shrinks. When a tooth is removed from its socket, this resorptive phenomenon also occurs with the alveolar bone—the bone that provides direct support to the teeth.

Just as scientists have found ways for astronauts to maintain and strengthen bones while living in space, Dr. Gustavo Avila-Ortiz is exploring new therapies to preserve the alveolar bone.

It is common to lose a significant amount of alveolar ridge volume in the first three to six months after a tooth extraction. “Without a tooth there to stimulate the bone, the alveolar ridge volume will decrease,” Avila-Ortiz explained. “Bone loss can lead to an intense remodeling of the contour of the alveolar ridge, which may make it difficult to replace a missing tooth with a dental implant,” he added.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, clinicians began to explore various ways to preserve the alveolar bone. “Over the years different bone substitutes, like bovine-derived xenograft or a human-derived allograft, typically applied in a particulate form, have been used to fill the tooth socket after tooth extraction in an attempt to reduce alveolar bone resorption. It has also been shown that sealing the socket orifice with a barrier material, such as a biocompatible membrane, is important to protect the underlying bone during the healing process.  This approach, known as alveolar ridge preservation, is a widely used therapy in contemporary practice. But it is not the only available option” Avila-Ortiz commented.

Another alveolar ridge preservation treatment involves intentionally leaving part of the tooth in the socket to stimulate the bone. “Although it can work, this treatment is technically hard, it isn’t always possible, and it may increase the risk of infections and failure of implant integration,” Avila-Ortiz said.

Although he admits that there is no single fix-it-all solution, Avila-Ortiz has been researching how different biomaterials can preserve the natural architecture of the bone after an extraction, minimize the detrimental effects of tooth loss, shorten the healing time between extraction and placing an implant, and reduce the need for additional bone grafting to allow for implant placement.

Recently, Avila-Ortiz has been working with Dr. Liu Hong and Dr. Brad Amendt, using the extraction socket as a research model, on therapies that would apply microRNA therapy for oral bone regeneration purposes. “It’s really very promising, and we are almost ready to initiate the first clinical trials with humans,” Avila-Ortiz said.

One of the main goals of Avila-Ortiz’s research in this area is to discover both new therapies and the influence that patient-specific factors (i.e., local and systemic) have on the outcomes of treatment.  “One size does not fit all. One of our objectives is to deliver individualized care to each of our patients,” Avila-Ortiz explained.

With over 100 presentations from students, staff, and faculty and an excellent keynote address by Dr. Rena D’Souza, the College of Dentistry’s Annual Local AADR Research Day was a great success. 

Our keynote speaker, Dr. D’Souza, is Professor of Neurobiology, Pathology, and Medicine and the Associate Vice President of Research at the University of Utah School of Medicine. As an outstanding scholar, leader, and mentor in our profession, she has held and continues to hold many prominent positions at her university and in the wider profession, including serving as President of the International Association for Dental Research, the 41^st President of the American Association for Dental Research, and many other prominent positions related to oral health. 

According to Dr. Brad Amendt, this is the first time that the current IADR president has addressed the college for our Research Day.

Dr. D’Souza expressed admiration for the college's efforts to develop an integrated research program that includes basic science, translational, and clinical research. She said that the college has become a cutting-edge institution in this respect, and in her opinion, it is why “Iowa is one of the top 10, if not top 5 dental colleges in the United States.”

Dr. D’Souza’s keynote address covered a variety of topics including important areas for research in dentistry and the oral sciences, her goals for the IADR, and the specific kinds of genetic research that she has explored personally.

College of Dentistry researchers are playing important roles in some of the important areas for research that Dr. D’Souza highlighted, including big data analysis, precision and personalized medicine, genomic research, microbiome research particularly regarding prebiotics or probiotics for the oral microbiome, and translational and clinical research.

And Dr. D’Souza’s own research shows the great value of collaborating with colleagues in a variety of related fields—from clinicians working with basic science researchers to oral science researchers learning from hair follicle research.

After her keynote address, Dr. D’Souza spent a great deal of time talking with faculty, staff, and students.

It was a wonderful opportunity for the college to deepen our relationship with Dr. D’Souza.

 Pictures of Research Day 

Research Day really starts years in advance as students, faculty, and staff produce their research. These posters are a reflection of their work, and the support from our excellent staff in Ed Media. Presenters hung their posters the night before Research Day.

Research Day started bright and early with a great deal of snowfall the night before.

Dean Johnsen speaking with our keynote speaker, Dr. Rena D’Souza.

Despite the weather, Dr. D’Souza was speaking to big crowd.

A series of photos of students presenting their research

The New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) granted Dr. Erliang Zeng a subaward grant for a project funded by the National Cancer Institute, a part of the NIH. The project, Molecular Circuit of Multi-ciliogenesis Regulates Choroid Plexus Differentiation and Tumor Development, investigates how the molecular circuit of malignant choroid plexus tumors in children interact with signaling pathways as the tumors are formed. Dr. Zeng will be responsible for leading efforts in bioinformatics development and data analysis for the project. Dr. Zeng brings significant expertise to provide outstanding support for the project on the omics data integration and bioinformatics analysis. This project will foster the already existing relationship and collaboration between subaward PI Erliang Zeng at UI and PI Haotian Zhao at NYIT and will strengthen the bioinformatics program development in the Division of Biostatistics and Computational Biology of the UI College of Dentistry.

From baseball to politics, big data has taken the world by storm. It has revolutionized our recreational pursuits and our health care decisions. Oral health research is no exception to this trend, and the College of Dentistry is on the cutting edge of that trend.

The Division of Biostatistics and Computational Biology provides statistical and computational expertise for the college’s research projects. Although in past generations statistical analysis was mostly performed by an individual researcher, it is now an expectation that elite biomedical research centers have a designated biostatistics division.

“A single person is simply not adequate anymore. The databases are too large and of great complexity, and any person would have to know database management, frequentist methods, Bayesian methods, bioinformatics, structural equation modeling, etc.,” said Dr. Xian Jin Xie, director of the Division of Biostatistics and Computational Biology.

Xie joined the college a little over a year ago in fall 2017, and since then, his division has worked with over 40 researchers at the college. Xie has really appreciated the collegial working environment. “Everyone is so easy to work with and the faculty really support one another,” said Xie. “This environment really lays the foundation for achieving more NIH grants, and potentially large multi-investigator program grants,” Xie added. 

Xie also underscored how much support he’s received from the college administration. “We have received great support from Dean Johnsen, Dean Schneider, and Dean Amendt. Everything we’ve asked for, they’ve given us.”

And Xie has asked for a lot! Ultimately, he aims for the division to become a model for dental colleges across the country. “We are the first college in the country to have a division of biostatistics and computational biology,” Xie said. This new methodological focus is poised to become the new standard. 

Xie’s first year plan had three goals for accomplishing that ambitious goal.

First, he sought to recruit high quality faculty and research staff, like associate professor Dr. Erliang Zeng, a new faculty member in the division who specializes in bioinformatics. Adding Zeng was crucial for establishing the division’s expertise in computational biology.

Second, he wanted to continuing building on the college’s grant writing success, and his division has helped with 10 NIH grant submissions and many foundation sponsored grants this past year.

Third, he plans to develop educational modules and one-hour lectures to help improve knowledge of statistical methods with the aim of helping all of our researchers, but especially our clinical researchers who want to do research but have limited time because of their extensive clinical responsibilities

Although a great deal of Xie’s attention is dedicated to serving as the director of the division and advising on dental research projects, he also conducts and publishes his own statistical research on 1), statistical model diagnosis; 2), high throughput data analysis; and 3), new design of Phase I Clinical trials.

“In my position, you need a breadth of knowledge to support various basic science and clinical research projects, but it’s always fulfilling and enjoyable to have your own research too,” said Xie.

The Division of Biostatistics and Computational Biology is located on the first floor of the north wing of the Dental Science Building and is available for consults for upcoming research projects.