On October 7, Interim Dean Galen Schneider presented Kecia Leary, clinical associate professor and graduate program director for the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, with the 2021 Collegiate Teaching Award. This award recognizes a faculty member who exhibits an “outstanding contribution to dental students’, graduate students’ or residents’ intellectual and professional development.”

Leary has taught in Department of Pediatric Dentistry since 2017, and she became the director of the graduate program in 2019. She is active in teaching dental students and pediatric dental residents, managing outreach clinics, and mentoring research projects for dental students and graduate students.

In 2019, Leary was identified as Mentor of the Year by the University of Iowa Dental Student Research Group.

Karin Weber-Gasparoni, professor and head of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, spoke glowingly of Leary saying that she “is an invaluable member of the Department of Pediatric Dentistry, and the College of Dentistry, whose work ethic and dedication to teaching excellence serve as a role model for students and faculty.”

"I'm honored and humbled by this award," Leary said.  She added, "I am so lucky to have so many great teachers and mentors in my life, they are why I do what I do. I looked to them to provide guidance and this experience inspired me to choose a career in academics. I knew when I finished my residency that it wasn’t a question of if I would teach it was only when. I am lucky that I now get to teach at the same place that I fell in love with dentistry and teaching (my two favorite topics)."

As the course director for the fourth-year Dental Emergency Course, Alberto Gasparoni exemplifies the characteristic features embodied in the James H. and Hermine E. McLeran Faculty Award and the namesakes for the award—a passionate commitment to dental education focused on excellence in teaching and patient-centered care.

Gasparoni earned his international DDS degree in 1985 from the University of Siena in Italy. After operating a private practice and conducting research at the University of Siena for several years, Gasparoni earned an MS in Oral Biology from the University of Missouri at Kansas City in 1997. While completing his Master’s degree, Gasparoni was encouraged to apply to the PhD program in Oral Science at the University of Iowa. A staff member gave Gasparoni an Iowa tshirt for good luck, which he still has, and the rest is history. Gasparoni went on to earn a PhD in Oral Science from the University of Iowa in 2003, and he would later earn a US-accredited DDS degree from Iowa in 2010.

Since 2010, Gasparoni has been a clinical associate professor at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry serving in Dental Clinic Administration and the Department of Oral Pathology, Radiology, and Medicine. Gasparoni is now the course director for the dental emergency course, which teaches students how to diagnose and triage one patient per hour in a fast-paced and stressful environment.

As director of the course, Gasparoni created an assessment tool, the PASS exercise, that is used to demonstrate that students in the course have entry-level competence to manage dental emergencies. 

Mike Kanellis, the associate dean of clinics, says of Gasparoni, “Dr. Gasparoni is an excellent role model for our D4 students while they are in the course. They can readily see his hard work ethic, his passion for dentistry, and most of all his compassion for our dental patients regardless of their background or circumstances.”

This patient-centered approach to care is central to Gasparoni’s educational philosophy.

“Dental emergency patients are no different than any other dental patient. Having them at the center of your care means to play your dental emergency treatment keeping in mind their needs (for example, pain or infection), desires (for example, a family event coming up), and barriers (for example, finances or time),” Gasparoni explained.

While this approach is not unique to emergency care, it is certainly easy to lose sight of the particularities of each individual patient when treating many patients in quick succession.

Gasparoni’s own patient care and what he models for his students is one where even in and especially in these circumstances, “it is important to care for all your patients—to get to know them, their needs, desires, and expectations, so that you can provide the best care possible for your patient.”

Because of his excellence as an educator and commitment to patient-centered care, it is our great honor to award Dr. Alberto Gasparoni the 2021 James H. and Hermine E. McLeran Faculty Award.

The Delta Dental Institute awarded Leonardo Marchini, associate professor in the Department of Community and Preventive Dentistry, almost $100K to evaluate the effect that the mobile application, GeriaDental, has on oral health outcomes for older adults who receive most dental care from a caregiver.

Older adults, especially those in nursing homes, often lack access to high-quality dental care and rely on nurses and other caregivers to brush and care for their teeth. Many of these caregivers feel unequipped to help older adults care for their oral health. 

Several years ago, Marchini, along with a team of specialists in geriatrics, geriatric oral health, and information technology, began developing an app, GeriaDental, that could help caregivers provide good oral hygiene to older adults. This app provides caregivers with access the vast resources available on an as-needed basis regarding dental care.

This grant from the Delta Dental Institute will allow Marchini and his team to evaluate whether the use of GeriaDental improves oral health outcomes for older adults who receive their daily dental care from a caregiver.  

Sato Ashida, associate professor in the Department of Community and Behavior Health in the College of Public Health, is working with Marchini on the project.

Building on his February 2020 NIH grant, Azeez Butali, professor in the Department of Oral Pathology, Radiology, and Medicine, was awarded a $154,000 supplemental award to determine the role of community gatekeepers, including community elders and religious leaders, in shaping opinions about undergoing genetic screenings and learning about genetic risks.

Studies have shown that these gatekeepers have affected research studies in Africa, but none of these studies have examined their role in the genetic and genomics research. Cultural and religious leaders play extensive roles in other health-related sectors in Africa, and there is already a social stigma associated with certain disorders at birth, like orofacial clefts, and learning about other genetic risks could increase stigmatization, thereby undermining genetic research and limiting the benefit that such research could have.

Thus, the aim is to develop methods to enlist those gatekeepers to help improve decision-making regarding participation in, learning from, and undergoing treatments (as available) for conditions revealed through genetic testing.

This project is the second supplemental grant for Butali’s original $3.2m NIH grant awarded in February of 2020. The title of that on-going project is “Refining the Genetic and Genomic Architecture of Non-syndromic Orofacial Clefts,” and it aims to identify new genetic variants of cleft lip (with or without cleft palate) in African populations with the goal of providing new insight into its pathogenesis.

The first supplemental grant was aimed at developing an ethically responsible way to handle information about other genetic conditions (such as sickle cell anemia) revealed in Butali’s research.

For this supplemental award, Butali is the principal investigator, and co-investigators include Kemi Odukoya and Wasiu Lanre Adeyemo from the University of Lagos, and Adebowale Adeyemo from the NIH.

An interdisciplinary team of investigators from the University of Iowa Public Policy Center’s (PPC) Health Policy Research Program has received a five-year extension of their project evaluating the Iowa Wellness Plan, Iowa’s version of the Medicaid expansion. The new evaluation plan took 18 months to develop and supports a waiver application received by the Iowa Department of Human Services from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that allows the state Medicaid Program to provide an innovative approach to providing medical and dental care to many adults in the Iowa Medicaid Program. The PPC research will focus on seven different aspects of the Iowa Wellness Plan including the Healthy Behaviors Incentive Program, the Dental Wellness Plan and the Waiver of Retroactive Eligibility. The rigorous, mixed-method evaluation plan will test over 50 hypotheses, and 170 research questions. The evaluation team includes faculty and staff investigators from the PPC, the College of Public Health, the College of Dentistry, the Department of Economics in the College of Business, the School of Planning and Public Affairs and the University of North Carolina College of Medicine. College of Dentistry faculty who are leading portions of this evaluation are Drs. Susan McKernan, Julie Reynolds and Pete Damiano. The research project runs through June 30, 2026.

The Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation awarded Dr. Leonardo Marchini a grant to support the final step in the development of a tool to measure the degree of ageism among dental students.

The Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation and the University of Iowa College of Dentistry have a long history of joint initiatives aimed at improving the oral health of older Iowans, and those initiatives have helped make Iowa a leader in the field. A crucial component to caring well for older adults is to address implicit or explicit ageism among dentists and oral health care professionals.

In dentistry, this can relate to an assumption that older adults are less likely to comply with dental advice, or their treatment is too time consuming. These kinds of attitudes have an impact on oral health care for older adults, which then has an impact on overall health and quality of life. For example, if an older person’s oral health deteriorates, it often affects their ability to chew and eat enough high-quality foods to meet their dietary needs.  

This diagnostic tool will allow dental educators to develop and evaluate specific strategies for addressing ageism among dental students thereby improving the oral health of older adults.

This tool has been in development for several years, and it has been translated and validated cross-culturally (for application in dental schools in Brazil, Greece, and Romania among other countries) as part of the process.

The BigMouth Dental Data Repository is a comprehensive database of electronic health records provided by dental schools in a partially de-identified manner. Eleven major dental schools are currently participating with Iowa joining in 2020. This repository can be used for high-powered research using information collected from each of the participating institutions, and is a promising avenue for big data research.

At present, there are over four million electronic health records for subjects available from the repository, and Iowa provides almost 800K of them. These records can be used to discover the relationships between various oral health conditions, and it can explore risk factors for those conditions—whether they are related to demographics, prior treatments, or other health conditions.

For example, in Joshi, et. al.’s Skeletal malocclusion: a developmental disorder with a life-long morbidity, the researchers surveyed the correlations between malocclusion and other medical conditions in the available literature, including conditions as diverse as sleep apnea, cleft lip and palate, and hypertension. Using the BigMouth Dental Data Repository, they identified just over 3,000 patients diagnosed with Class I, II, or III malocclusion, and were, then, able to determine whether correlations found in significantly smaller data sets in the available literature held with this much larger group. 

The amount and quality of information available in the repository is an exciting opportunity that can provide extensive evidence in response to important clinically-oriented research questions. 

Here at Iowa, Dr. Brian Howe, director of clinics and assistant professor in the Department of Family Dentistry, and Dr. Ahmed Mahrous, assistant professor in the Department of Prosthodontics, have begun working on a project that will use the repository. They are piloting the project with data from Iowa’s own database in Axium, but plan to expand the study to include the larger data set from BigMouth.

The BigMouth team at Iowa includes Dr. Brian Howe, Chuck McBrearty, Dr. Kyungsup Shin, and Sara Miller. To learn more, including how to access the data, please review this presentation (pdf).

Dr. Sukirth Ganesan, assistant professor in periodontics, and a team of researchers in the Carver College of Medicine, including Eric Taylor (Physiology), Ashutosh Mangalam and Kevin Legge (Pathology), were awarded a Carver Trust COVID-19 Pilot Collaborative Award. The grant, Unraveling the role of saliva in COVID- 19 pathogenesis using a comprehensive multi-omics approach, will involve a multi-arm, cross-sectional, case-control study with an integrated -omics approach to determine the microbial, metabolic, functional, and immune alterations in the saliva of COVID-19 patients. Especially, with the recent publications highlighting an important role of saliva in transmission in ARS-nCoV2 infections, the grant will help in understanding the pathogenesis of SARS-nCoV2. The multidisciplinary team draws expertise in microbiome, oral biology, metabolomics, viral genomics, immunology, and infectious diseases with Drs. Ganesan, Mangalam, and Taylor as Co-Principal investigators, Dr. Legge as co-investigator, and Drs. Val Sheffield (Molecular Genetics) and Katherine Imborek (Influenza-like-Illness clinics) as consultants. Total funding for this award is $74,900 and the one-year project starts from June 1, 2021.

In the Harry Potter universe, Harry Potter regrew a bone simply by drinking a magic potion. Researchers at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry are working to make this fantasy a reality—not with magic but with novel tissue engineering strategies and cutting-edge science.

Dr. Hongli Sun, associate professor in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and the Iowa Institute for Oral Health Research, is one of several faculty members at the college leading the charge to develop novel bone regeneration strategies.

Typically, when bones or joints are seriously damaged, such as in multiple or complex fractures or in bones that are seriously compromised by age, disease, infection, or injury, the most common treatment is a bone-graft using one’s own bone material. A less invasive and potentially more effective approach is to harness a body’s own bodily repair processes to quickly and efficiently repair and regenerate bone.

Dr. Sun’s team is researching more effective ways to use the body’s own internal repair processes by tailoring a specific bone regeneration strategy to the specific cause(s) of bone damage. There are two major areas where his team is making great strides.

In the first area, emerging research uses deferoxamine, a drug that treats iron poisoning, to activate the hypoxia-induced factor-1α, which in turn promotes angiogenesis and bone regeneration. The two biggest obstacles to this line of research has been safety concerns and complicating factors, such as chronic inflammation, which are common among older individuals.

Dr. Sun’s team is addressing both obstacles. Dr. Sun’s team uses a small molecule, phenamil, to reduce inflammation and promote endogenous bone regeneration. To address safety concerns, the research team has engineered a novel nanomaterial scaffold that mimics the bone collagen structure and delivers deferoxamine and phenamil locally and controllably.

“The drug themselves are not new and people have been using them, but we are developing a new method for controlled release of the drugs that can be delivered at a specific location,” Dr. Sun explained.

These two innovations could pave the way for treatments to rejuvenate and repair significant bone damage, even for older adults. Dr. Sun and his team were recently awarded a five-year National Institutes of Health grant totaling over $1.7 million to support this research project

In a second area, Dr. Sun and his team are developing a specific bone regeneration strategy tailored to the specific needs associated with periodontitis-induced bone and tooth loss. In particular, the strategy treats the bacteria that causes periodontitis while continuously and effectively directing the body’s own repair processes to the site of the damage.

Although Dr. Sun has only been at the College of Dentistry since 2018, he has had remarkable success in developing his own research and securing grant funding for his projects.

From developmental biologists, like Dr. Brad Amendt, to research design and biostatistical support from Dr. Xian Jin Xie, to mechanics support from the College of Engineering, to clinical expertise from oral surgeons and periodontists, Dr. Sun has found a wide-range of collaborators that ultimately makes his work better.

“For any major research like this, we really need a well-rounded team, with a lot of different experts from different areas,” Sun explained, “and I came to Iowa because I knew I would get strong support that from other researchers, support staff, and the administration,” he added.

With researchers like Dr. Sun and his team on the case, it’s only a matter of time before we are making the fantasy of regrowing bone tissue a reality.

For almost a decade, Dr. Julie Holloway has been the head of the Department of Prosthodontics at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry. But service to her department only tells part of the story. Over her 28-year career in academic dentistry, Dr. Julie Holloway has been a model of excellence in research and in educating and mentoring advanced prosthodontics students, and she has served as a key leader in her department at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry, and in the prosthodontics profession more generally.

As a researcher, she has:

• Been a co-investigator in large research grants, including two NIH-funded R01s;
• Published 54 journal articles, 27 of them during her 10 years at Iowa;
• Authored 3 book chapters;
• Presented numerous abstracts at local, regional, national, or international meetings and conferences.

As an educator and mentor, she has:

• Taught extensively at both the predoctoral and postdoctoral level;
• Published numerous articles on dental education;
• Directed the program in advanced education for prosthodontics residents at both Iowa and Ohio State for well over a decade;
• Served as thesis advisor for five Master’s students in prosthodontics (3 at Iowa);
• Served as a thesis committee member for 28 other Master’s students in prosthodontics (11 at Iowa);
• Received the Garver-Staffanou Prosthodontic Program Director's Award for Excellence from the American Academy of Fixed Prosthodontics in 2018 (shown below on the right).

Dr. Terry Lindquist, associate professor in prosthodontics, spoke glowingly of Dr. Holloway’s contributions as an educator and mentor.

Lindquist said, “She instituted changed the Prosthodontic curriculum by creating modules with the pre-clinical courses which benefitted both students and the faculty.”

“She understood the benefits and found ways of adding or doing what she could to support digital dentistry in the department for the graduate program and the faculty,” Lindquist added.  

As a leader in the prosthodontics profession, she has served as:

• President of the American Academy of Fixed Prosthodontics (shown to the left); 
• President of the Carl O. Boucher Prosthodontic Conference;
• Treasurer of the American College of Prosthodontics;
• Committee member for the Prosthodontics Review Committee for the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA)
• Board member on the Board of Directors for the International Association for Dental Research Prosthodontics Group

These lists speak for themselves, but her personal impact at the College of Dentistry and the Department of Prosthodontics go well beyond these accomplishments as her students and colleagues can attest.

When Dr. Holloway came to Iowa in 2011, she started the annual tradition of serving homeless patients or veterans in need for National Prosthodontics Awareness Week. The Department of Prosthodontics has also provided care each year at the Iowa Mission of Mercy.

Dr. Lindquist expressed her appreciation for Holloway’s support and her consistent acknowledgment of what Lindquist and other faculty members contribution to the Department of Prosthodontics.

Dr. Salahaldeen Abuhammoud wrote his Master’s thesis under Dr. Holloway’s direction and is now an assistant professor in the Department of Prosthodontics.

“Dr. Holloway is one of those rare individuals that combined excellence as a clinician, educator, mentor, and research, and her demand for perfection inspired me to be a better prosthodontist” Abuhammoud said. “That is why she is such a national and inspirational leader in our profession,” he added.

Dr. Michelle Burson is one of Dr. Holloway’s current graduate students in the Advanced Prosthodontics residency.

“Dr. Holloway is an example of the kind of prosthodontist that I want to be,” Burson said. “When you have a problem, she has an answer or does what she can to help you solve it,” she added.

“She encouraged me to be a prosthodontist, pushes me to be my best, and I use the techniques that she has taught me every single day,” she said.

For Burson, however, what stands out is how much Holloway cares about her students and patients.

These accounts are why Dr. Lindquist said, “You could see devotion to teaching the graduate students… in the laboratory or clinic, as she patiently reviewed with them the fundamentals and advanced aspects of prosthodontics.”

As Dr. Holloway moves to France after her retirement on May 3, she wishes everyone a fond “Adieu”.

For the past decade, Iowa has had the honor and privilege of having Dr. Isabelle Denry, one of the world’s foremost experts in dental ceramics, on our faculty. After several years in a private dental practice in France and completing a master’s degree in dental biomaterials, Denry decided to begin an academic career. In 1987, she became an assistant professor in the Department of Biomaterials and Biophysics at the University of Paris School of Dentistry, and she went off to earn her PhD in Odontological Sciences from the University of Paris School of Chemistry in 1989. She came to the United States as a research associate in the operative dentistry department at UCLA in 1990, and later went on to establish her own career as an independent researcher at the Ohio State University beginning in 1991 and full professor in 2006. After 20 years at Ohio State, Denry brought her innovative research and expertise to Iowa as a professor in prosthodontics and as a researcher in the Iowa Institute for Oral Health Research, where she has served since 2011.

After a remarkable and fruitful 34-year academic career, Denry will be retiring from Iowa on May 3, 2021. Over her career, she has:

• Received an IADR Distinguished Scientist Award recognizing excellence in the field of dental materials (2019);
• Received the IADR Innovation in Oral Care Award (2020);
• Secured large research grants, including two NIH-funded R01 and three R21 awards;
• Published 59 journal articles, 15 of them during her 10 years at Iowa;
• Co-authored a two-part textbook, and wrote 7 book chapters;
• Obtained 4 US patents;
• Presented numerous abstracts at local, regional, national, or international meetings and conferences

With almost 5,000 citations over her career, including one first-author publication with over 2,000 citations, Denry has become one of the world’s greatest authorities in the development, use, and understanding of the structure and clinical uses of ceramics in dentistry.

And her recent work has taken her well beyond a purely dental context with her invention of a novel and effective blood-clotting agent, for which Denry and the University of Iowa just filed an International patent application.

Denry attributes her success as a researcher to her exploratory and entrepreneurial methodology.

She’s always looking for new angles and possibilities, potential applications of novel materials, as well as innovative experimental approaches.

“I like to think outside the box and I am excited to try high risk/high reward experiments. Often the results are inconclusive; but scientists need to explore new possibilities—I was trained to be rigorous but audacious at the University of Paris and that’s really what science is about,” Dr. Denry said.

Denry also lives out that approach with her students, according to Kan Wongkamhaeng, a PhD student in oral science. With Denry’s high risk/high reward experiments, “Experiments do not always go how we wanted,” he explained. “And Dr. Denry would encourage me by explaining that she expects that many experiments will not work, and she would say, ‘That is the meaning of word, ‘research.’”

Dean David Johnsen expressed his high regard for Denry saying, “Isabelle Denry has been an inspiration as a scientist who impacts the world of dental materials, as a mentor who makes a difference in the lives and careers of many, and as a role model of integrity and dedication at the College of Dentistry.”

Associate Dean for Research Jin Xie sees these same qualities in Denry—excellence as a researcher, colleague, and mentor.

He added, “During this past year, I saw her wisdom, insight, and expertise on full display as she served on the college’s research proposal advisory panel to review grant proposals for the 2020 seed grant initiative. Her comments and advice were valuable and important, especially for our junior faculty members, and it has made a difference for our entire college.”

For the past decade, Denry has been an invaluable member of the College of Dentistry. As she moves back to France in the coming months, her impact here at Iowa will continue to be felt. The image on the right shows Dr. Denry and Dr. Julie Holloway after France won the World Cup in 2018.    

The present and future direction of health care is all about delivering unique and personalized health care. Being able to meet the exact needs of a patient, while considering their distinct attributes with a precise and measured treatment is revolutionizing the health care industry. Dentistry is no exception, and Dr. Christopher Barwacz’s research is focused on improving treatment outcomes for patients receiving oral implants so that a given dental implant and its prosthetic components are customized for a given patient, rather than trying to fit the patient to a formulaic therapeutic regimen.

Although the field of oral implantology started to take off in the mid-1980s, it wasn’t until this century that the field matured—as it moved beyond a focus of obtaining predictable and successful results pertaining to the bone growing around and supporting an implant to a focus on personalizing and optimizing implant therapy with the goal of expanding the pool of patients who could receive implant replacement therapy without affecting treatment outcomes. To achieve such ends, a focus of research efforts was needed to investigate factors in the transition zone between an implant body and its prosthetic crown that helped contribute to success.

Dr. Barwacz, associate professor in the Department of Family Dentistry, is a leader in personalizing and optimizing implantology, and his research has moved along three main directions to support these goals.

The first direction explores the outcomes of shorter implants (6 mm) versus a traditional implant (≥11 mm).

“Historically, some patients weren’t good candidates for implants without undergoing significant augmentation procedures because their anatomy made it difficult to place a traditional-length implant,” Barwacz explained. “But we found that shorter implants, when planned and restored properly, had a similar long-term success rate to traditional implants, which allows us to optimize the implant length to the anatomical needs of the patient, and treat them in a more minimally-invasive fashion, thereby allowing more patients to potentially receive care.”

In the second, Barwacz and his team investigated the biocompatibility and longer-term prosthetic outcomes of biomaterials used in the fabrication of patient-specific, digitally-designed and manufactured custom abutments, which anchor the prosthetic tooth of the implant to the underlying implant body. “Just because a prosthetic component is still ‘in function’ does not necessarily mean it is ‘successful’, when taking into account factors such as inflammation, discoloration, tissue support, and patient-reported outcomes,” Barwacz said. “The nature of how the prosthetic connection between an implant and its corresponding abutment is designed, as well as the morphology of the abutment as it emerges through the mucosa can potentially have a significant influence on biological stability of the peri-implant tissues, making this an exciting area of research.”

The third direction harnesses the power of digital dentistry to optimize implant therapy. With a digital rendering of the patient’s teeth, mucosa, and supporting bone, the clinician can not only plan the surgery virtually, but can also design and manufacture the custom patient-specific prosthetic components a priori before the actual surgery, resulting in the capability to either immediately restore the missing tooth, or to guide healing post-surgery in a customized fashion. This leads to less morbidity, a more predictable surgery, and the potential to expedite treatment that is patient-centered with a unique treatment solution.

In each of these projects, Barwacz’s approach is multidisciplinary and involves close collaboration with colleagues as well as industry partners.

“Oral implantology is deeply multidisciplinary—to optimize outcomes, you need to collaborate closely with quality-oriented specialists in many different areas to ensure that the final restorative outcome meets the needs of the patient optimally,” Barwacz said.

Through it all, Barwacz’s approach is to start with the end goal in mind and work backwards starting with the patient’s desired endpoint and the specifics of the implant site’s biology to customize care. Incorporating multicenter and multidisciplinary clinical research collaborations to help establish evidence-based protocols that expand and improve outcomes for patients in the future brings Dr. Barwacz the most professional satisfaction.

The Osteology Foundation awarded Dr. Satheesh Elangovan, professor in periodontics and Dr. Aliasger Salem, professor in pharmaceutical sciences and experimental therapeutics, $28K for their proof of concept investigation, "A Novel Topical Molecular Therapeutics to Induce Keratinization in Non-Keratinized Mucosa." 

Keratinized tissue (KT) around natural teeth and implants are vital for maintaining optimal oral hygiene, reducing marginal inflammation and preventing future gingival/mucosal recession. Currently, time tested surgical approaches are available to predictably increase KT width but they are associated with significant morbidity and potential surgical complications. In their proof of concept study, Drs Elangovan and Salem, co-prinicipal investigators for the project, propose to assess the keratinization induction potential of elastase, when delivered topically using choline geranic acid (1:1) ionic liquid (CAGE) as a delivery vehicle. If effective, this strategy has immense translational potential to become a mainstay treatment to increase KT width with significantly minimal morbidity.

Dr. Erica Teixeira, associate professor and chair of the Department of Operative Dentistry, was awarded a $35K  subcontract from the National Institutes of Health via the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio to develop a boron nitride nanosheet (BNNS)-based filler system to enhance dental composite performance in tooth restorations.

Some studies estimate that dental composites tend to last for less than 8 years due to failures usually related to polymerization shrinkage and shrinkage stress, resin degradation, secondary caries and restoration fracture. These failed restorations must be repaired or replaced. Thus, a restorative system that lasts longer would address a substantial and urgent need in dental and oral health care.

To meet this need while working toward a long-term goal of bringing graphene technology to the dental materials toolbox, Dr. Teixeira was awarded a sub-contract as part of an R56 (PI: Whang-UTHSCSA) entitled, “Boron Nitride Nanosheets (BNNSs) to Enhance Dental Composite Performance.” The overall goal of this project is to develop a boron nitride nanosheet (BNNS)-based filler system to enhance dental composite performance, by determining the effects of BNNS loading on composite total filler loading, curing, physical and optical properties and the in vitro cytotoxicity of BNNS-loaded composites.

Professor Xian Jin Xie was announced as the next Centennial Research Professor. This professorship recognizes Dr. Xie’s international reputation in research, the impact of his current research for its own sake and for the advancement of the college’s strategic mission in research. Dr. Xie is currently Associate Dean for Research and Director of the Division of Biostatistics and Computational Biology for the University of Iowa College of Dentistry. He also holds a joint appointment in the University of Iowa College of Public Health, and has collaborated with over 100 clinical, translational, and basic science principal investigators, leading the quantitative biomedical research effort on 52 peer-reviewed grants and 32 clinical trials including two NIH Cancer Center Support Grants, SPORE grants (P50) in lung and renal cancer, various single-PI NIH grants, as well as grants from NASA, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), the American Cancer Society, and the US Department of Defense. These awards have provided over $90 million of research funding, and the resulting collaborations have led to 138 articles published in peer-reviewed journals with more than 7000 citations to date.

Dean David Johnsen said of Dr. Xie, "While the numbers are impressive, even more impressive is what a team player Professor Xie is!  He has collaborated with faculty from several colleges on campus as well as graduate and predoctoral students." 

Since Professor Xie assumed the role of associate dean, the college has continued improving its research trajectory with record levels of NIH funding and applications, and securing P3 funds to support an NIH P50 application on oral cancer.  Dr. Xie also initiated a seed grant program with the goal fund innovative projects from early-career investigators or established investigators who are developing a new line of research. The goal of these grants is to encourage research and generate data that will enable the awardees to be competitive for peer-reviewed national funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health.

Regarding this professorship, Dr. Xian said, "It is a great honor for me to be nominated for the College of Dentistry’s Centennial Professorship."

He added, "My vision for this professorship is to be a facilitator of others’ scholarship efforts, a discussion leader, and a champion for collaborative research success through serving, collaborating, and empowering others to achieve excellence to make the College of Dentistry a global leader in dental research!"   

Dr. Xie will continue the legacy of excellence exemplified by those who have held this professorship.  

As an expert in the genetics of embryonic development, Dr. Eric Van Otterloo has opened a new dimension for understanding craniofacial development, genetics, and bone formation.

Van Otterloo’s most recent line of research began when he identified, in the mouse genome, a mutation in the gene Memo1. The mutation, which removed the Memo1 gene, affected craniofacial bone development. Up until that point, Memo1 was primarily associated with breast cancer. In this context, Memo1 was responsible for cell migration, and thus breast cancer metastasis, but Van Otterloo’s discovery opened a new area of inquiry for this gene.

During embryonic development, the cartilage and bone in the head and the face develops out of a particular kind of cells called the neural crest. Along with the cranial bones and cartilage, neural crest cells contribute to several tissues important for life. Van Otterloo’s discovery, using mice with mutations to the gene Memo1, revealed the MEMO1 protein has a unique role in regulating neural crest derived craniofacial bone.

He and his team began investigating the precise mechanism behind this developmental process. First, they found that deleting Memo1 from the neural crest cells alone resulted in some of the same defects they had observed when Memo1 was removed from the entire mouse embryo. This finding suggested that Memo1 played a role directly within the neural crest cells to regulate craniofacial bone mineralization, rather than having an indirect impact on these cells.

Like the neural crest, the ectoderm also contributes to ameloblasts, the cells that deposit enamel on the outer surface of the teeth. Would MEMO1 also play a role in the mineralization process of these cells? To address this question, the Van Otterloo lab deleted Memo1 specifically from the ameloblasts. They found that deleting Memo1 from these cells resulted in severely compromised tooth enamel, again, suggesting Memo1 was somehow involved in mineralization of another tissue.

These experimental processes have helped Van Otterloo and his team investigate the precise mechanism by which Memo1 is regulating mineralization of distinct tissue types during craniofacial development. Current work in the Van Otterloo lab includes trying to determine exactly how Memo1 is controlling both of these mineralization events, and whether there are any shared feature in these mechanisms.

“Memo1 is still a little bit elusive. In breast cancer, it signals and governs cell migration, and for bone development, it regulates bone mineralization,” Van Otterloo said.

“Being able to understand the mechanism by which Memo1 operates could allow us to enhance bone formation or block bone formation to address developmental defects,” he added.

Van Otterloo is continuing this work with a recent, and he was recently awarded a three-year $700K grant for a project investigation the interactions between Memo1 and Runx2.

Runx2 is a transcription factor for activating genes and a master regulator for bone development. In this research project, Van Otterloo is exploring the precise relationship between Memo1 and Runx2.

“We know that Runx2 is crucial for bone development, but we don’t know whether or how it is related to Memo1,” Van Otterloo explained. “We will determine how central Runx2 is to the expression of Memo1 in gene regulatory networks in bone and enamel development,” Van Otterloo added.

Building on Memo1’s role in communicating and directing other cells, it may be the case that Memo1 plays a coordinating role setting up the cytoskeletal system, which plays an important role in the formation of bone and teeth.

This original research fits well at Iowa.

“Iowa has extensive research on cranial facial anomalies and bone regeneration harnessing genetic research,” Van Otterloo said.

In particular, Van Otterloo said that Memo1 could be a good candidate for the team of researchers at Iowa looking into specific therapeutics regarding bone regeneration, and Memo1 could be used to improve specific bone regeneration strategies. Likewise, researchers at Iowa who specialize in orofacial clefting and human genetics could explore the role of Memo1 in various patient cohorts with orofacial clefting.

These studies into the genetics of embryonic bone formation are not only expanding scientific knowledge in the area, but they are also laying the basic science groundwork necessary to move from the bench to the dental chair.

On Thursday, the University of Iowa announced that the first $7.5 million of the investment revenue generated from the public-private partnership (P3) for its utility system would include a $600K+ award for the College of Dentistry. With this support, an interdisciplinary team with over 40-people, including Iowa faculty from the Colleges of Dentistry, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Engineering, will develop the preliminary data and program structure to apply and be competitive for an $11 million grant from the NCI/NIDCR to establish a P50 Specialized Program of Research Excellence in oral cancer. This specialized research program in oral cancer will be the first of its kind in the nation.

Each year, approximately 53,000 people are diagnosed with some form of oral cancer and almost 10,000 die. Early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of oral cancer significantly enhance survival rates and reduce morbidity.

These P3 funds will significantly improve the chances that this interdisciplinary team will be able to secure P50 funds for each of the proposed research projects, and these projects would in turn help fill gaps in knowledge and in clinical translation necessary to substantially improve early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of oral cancer.

More specifically, the P3 funds will enable the team to develop the infrastructure and administrative units for supporting each of the research projects, and it will allow the project teams to generate preliminary data.  

In their award letter, Provost Kevin Kregel and Vice President of Research Martin Scholtz said of the project, "Establishing the nation’s first NCI/NIDCR P50 in Oral Cancer will bring national and international distinction to the University of Iowa. We look forward to seeing the progress towards establishing the support activities necessary to be competitive in the P50 grant submission."

The six projects are as follows:

Project 1: The Oral Microbiome in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC)

Co-PIs: Jeffrey Banas, PhD; David Drake, PhD; Sukirth Ganesan, BDS, PhD; Co-Is: Emily Lanzel, DDS; John Hellstein, DDS; Xian Jin Xie, PhD; Eric Taylor, PhD; Liu Hong, MD, PhD; Consultant: Kim Brogden, PhD

Project 2: Dissecting the PRMT5 regulatory pathway in oral epithelium differentiation

Co-PIs: Robert Cornell, PhD; Eric Van Otterloo, PhD; Ronald Weigel, MD, PhD; Co-Is: John Hellstein, DDS; Xian Jin Xie, PhD

Project 3: Tissue-Engineered Approaches for Oral Cancer Reconstructive Surgery

Co-PIs: Liu Hong, MD, PhD; Hongli Sun, PhD; Co-Is: Nitin Pagedar, MD; Brad Amendt, PhD; Marisa Buchakjian, MD, PhD; Xuan Song, PhD

Project 4: In situ Immunization with nanoparticles for treating oral squamous cell carcinoma

Co-PIs: Ali Salem, PhD; George Weiner, MD; Co-Is: Douglas Laux, MD; Andrean Simons-Burnett, PhD; Kyungsup Shin, DMD, PhD; Kim Brogden, PhD; Xian Jin Xie, PhD

Project 5: Discovering Genetic Susceptibility to Oral Cancer

Co-PIs: Xian Jin Xie, PhD; Erliang Zeng, PhD; Co-Is: Robert Cornell, PhD; Azeez Butali, DDS, PhD; Ronald Weigel, MD, PhD; Benjamin Darbro, MD, PhD

Project 6: NEK2 in Oral Cancer Biology and Therapy

Co-PIs: Frank Zhan, MD, DDS, PhD; Marisa Buchakjian, MD, PhD; Emily Lanzel, DDS; Co-Is: Carryn Anderson, MD; Veeratrishul Allareddy, BDS

The vaccine rollout at the University of Iowa initially began by prioritizing first-line health care providers, and it has recently expanded to include health care providers more generally, including College of Dentistry and Dental Clinics faculty, staff, and students who are directly involved in patient care. As COVID-19 cases and deaths in the United States continue to rise, these vaccinations point toward a light at the end of this journey.

The first faculty and staff members at the College of Dentistry received their vaccinations through University Employee Health Clinic at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics last week, and dental students began receiving their vaccinations from University of Iowa Student Health this week. Many adjunct faculty members are receiving vaccinations from local Departments of Health in their home, or surrounding counties.

These vaccinations are the first in a series of two vaccinations. After the second vaccination, the Moderna vaccination is 94.1% effective at preventing laboratory confirmed cases of COVID-19 and the Pfizer vaccination is 95% effective at preventing them.

Since more data are needed to determine how effective these vaccinations are at preventing transmission of COVID-19, the CDC has recommended that vaccinated individuals continue to social distance and wear personal protection equipment (including masks). As such, the College of Dentistry and Dental Clinics is maintaining current risk mitigation protocols, including social distancing, PPE requirements, and other risk mitigation efforts, even after all faculty, staff, and students in the building has been given both vaccine doses.

At this time, the college does not know when faculty, residents, and staff members who are not involved in patient care will be offered vaccinations.

Dr. Mike Kanellis, associate dean of clinics, has been consistently sending out email updates on the latest vaccination information for College of Dentistry faculty, staff, and students, and as more information becomes available, he will continue to communicate it to the college.

Photos provided by Faculty/Staff/Students are below.

 Third-year dental students, Emma Miller, Brady Ellis, and Maddie Kasparek.

 First-year dental students Sarmad Hussein, Luke Hovey, and Grant Kincaid

The American Association of Orthodontics awarded Dr. Aline Petrin, associate research scientist in the Iowa Institute for Oral Health Research, the 2021 Milo Hellman Research Award. This award will be presented during the virtual AAO Excellence in Orthodontics Awards Luncheon at Annual Session.

Dr. Thomas Southard, DEO in the Department of Orthodontics, expressed his congratulations and said of Dr. Petrin receiving the award, “This is the top orthodontic research prize in the world!”

Dr. Petrin was chosen for this prestigious award based on her research project, "Epigenome-wide analysis of DNA methylation in monozygotic twins discordant for orofacial clefts." This project is part of her 5-year career-development K01 NIH grant and draws on a unique and powerful approach to genetic research that uses discordant twins to study key epigenetics factors, which play a causal role in orofacial clefts

"It is an honor to be the recipient of the Milo Hellman Award. This achievement would not have been possible without the support that I receive. I extend my sincere thanks to my mentors, Dr. Moreno, Dr. Murray and Dr. Marazita, to the Department of Orthodontics, to our Division of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, and the College of Dentistry leadership."