Nation’s first oral biology PhD program turns 50

The celebration included an informal dinner and evening of reminiscing, and a two-day symposium featuring the research it helped to pioneer — research on the relationship between oral and systemic health.

The conference, titled “Oral Microbiome, Immunity and Chronic Disease,” held earlier this year, offered presentations at the Hotel Lafayette and was sponsored in part by an educational grant from Sunstar Americas.

Frank A. Scannapieco, DMD, PhD, professor and chair of oral biology, who is working on a brief history of UB’s Department of Oral Biology to be published in the Journal of Dental Research, is also a proud alumnus of the program.

“Our PhD program has produced a large cadre of oral health researchers, many of whom have gone on to major contributions to dental research and education,” said Scannapieco.

Those alumni include Lawrence Tabak, PhD, ’81, who served as the director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and is now deputy director of the National Institutes of Health; Mark Herzberg, PhD, ’78, past editor of the Journal of Dental Research; and many others who have served as deans and associate deans of dental schools and present and former chairs of academic departments.

One of the most important research findings ever to come out of the UB School of Dental Medicine, Michael Glick DMD, and UB dental school dean says, has been the research from oral biology that specifically addressed the connection between oral health and systemic health.

“Dr. Robert Genco and his co-workers were at the forefront of elucidating what the relationship is all about and now it’s reverberating all over the world,” Glick said.

Opening remarks on the first day of the symposium were made by Robert J. Genco, DDS, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor, director of the UB Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR) and UB professor of periodontics and endodontics, who in 1976 became the second chair of oral biology and served in that position for 25 years. Genco shared his reflections on the origins of oral biology and how far it has come.

Genco joined the faculty in 1968 after receiving his DDS training in Buffalo and PhD training in immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. He established a productive research program in oral immunology and microbiology that focused on the development of periodontal disease. He was also one of the first investigators to associate gum disease with systemic diseases such as diabetes and atherosclerosis.

“I was chair for 25 years,” Genco said. “I enjoyed it and I hope others enjoyed it too. The department worked as a whole, we were like one big family — over 130 people including staff and faculty — not always agreeing but being agreeable, which is important.”

Symposium presentations were organized into general categories: microbiology, immunology, saliva, periodontal medicine, periodontal biology and bone biology. They included “Genomics/metagenomics of periodontal bacteria,” “Is there a role for passive immunity in the treatment of periodontal disease?” “New approaches to treat salivary gland dysfunction” and “Periodontitis and cardiovascular disease: systemic and genetic connections.”

Scannapieco noted that when the UB Department of Oral Biology was established in 1963, it was the first such dental department in the U.S. dedicated to the conduct of basic research, graduate biomedical education and provision of basic oral science education for the DDS curriculum.

It is easy to overlook what a dramatic development this was, he said, because research in dental and medical schools seems second nature to us now. But making the leap from teaching and providing only clinical experience to incorporating research, required a major paradigm shift.

“Historically, both medicine and dentistry were not research-based disciplines,” Scannapieco said. “In 1926 a report by William J. Gies, a professor at Columbia University, urged dental schools to become fully integrated with their parent universities and to increase full-time faculty, promote research and graduate study while grounding the practice of dentistry in science and investing in research infrastructure.”

The 50th anniversary celebration also was attended by two luminaries who have made major contributions to the UB Department of Oral Biology: Solon “Art” Ellison, DDS, who was selected as the first chair of the department and served from 1963 to 1976; and Ernest Hausmann, DMD, PhD, the first and only full-time researcher on the faculty in 1960. Hausmann later developed computer-assisted measurement systems to measure alveolar bone height in periodontal disease, an essential component in determining whether the disease was advancing.

(Source: University at Buffalo)