dentistryresearch

Betty Hoac, PhD student (supervisor Dr. Marc McKee, co-supervisor Dr. Monzur Murshed) wins 2-year FRQS studentship for her research on regulation of mineralization in bones and teeth.

David Wright, Postdoctoral Fellow (co-supervised by Dr. Mary Ellen Macdonald and Dr. Jennifer Fishman) wins 2-year FRQS fellowship for his research on ethical issues in end-of-life care to better understand nursing practice with patients who desire death.

Last week, Dr. Jocelyne Feine was honoured with IADR’s Distinguished Service Award in Seattle, WA. The award is presented to an individual member of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR) for outstanding instances of service to the Association or distinguished service over a period of time. It is intended to recognize members who have not served as officers of the IADR official. Read the official press release here.

Elusive substrate protein identified in the most common form of heritable rickets

Diagnosed in toddlers, X-linked hypophosphatemia (XLH) is the most common form of heritable rickets, in which soft bones bend and deform, and tooth abscesses develop because infections penetrate soft teeth that are not properly calcified.  Researchers at McGill University and the Federal University of Sao Paulo have identified that osteopontin, a major bone and tooth substrate protein, plays a role in XLH. Their discovery may pave the way to effectively treating this rare disease.

The team led by Prof. Laura Stone, a professor at the Faculty of Dentistry and the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain, and Prof. Moshe Szyf, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, have discovered a mechanism that embeds the memory of an injury in the way the DNA is marked in the brain by a chemical coating called methyl groups or DNA methylation.

Professors Marc McKee (as lead investigator), Jake Barralet and Maryam Tabrizian, along with Hojatollah Vali as Director of the Facility for Electron Microscopy Research (FEMR) and six others, have received funding for a new cryo-focused ion beam scanning electron microscope.  This nanotechnology instrument allows artifact-free sectioning of essentially any hard or soft material ‒ particularly frozen biological cells and tissues including bones and teeth ‒ for correlative microscopies and 3D ultrastructural and molecular reconstructions.

Graduate student Khady Ka won first place in the Senior Clinical Research Category of the Canadian Association for Dental Research (CADR) student research award competition. This award was for her project "Clustering of metabolic abnormalities and periodontal inflammation in children," supervised by Dr. Belinda Nicolau. This research study will now be entered into the International Association for Dental Research (IADR)/Unilever Hatton Award Competition to be held in Seattle, Washington, USA on March 19, 2013 as part of the IADR annual meeting.

Dental student Daniel Salah has won 1st place in the Junior Category of the Canadian Association for Dental Research (CADR) student research award competition.  This award was for his research work on “Salivary sHLA-G in scleroderma patients and controls,” with Dr. M. Gornitsky and Dr. Ana Velly as supervisors of the study.  Mr. Salah’s research study will now be entered into the International Association for Dental Research (IADR)/Unilever Hatton Award Competition to be held in Seattle, Washington, USA on March 19, 2013 as part of the IADR annual meeting.

Dr. Laura Stone describes her findings on lower back pain and changes in the brain on TeleQuebec’s Le Code Chastenay.

Watch here (1st story after intro)