Reinforcing NIDCR’s Commitment to Foundational Research

Before I dive into today’s Director’s Message, I want to take a moment to introduce and welcome our new director, Dr. Jonathan Burke, who took the helm at NIDCR last month. Dr. Burke comes to us following a long career as a board-certified oral and maxillofacial surgeon specializing in craniofacial trauma and cleft palate reconstruction. Dr. Burke’s depth of clinical expertise adds a unique and valuable perspective to NIDCR’s mission to improve oral and overall health for all. You can learn more about Dr. Burke’s background in this NIH news release. As he settles into his role, you can look forward to hearing from Dr. Burke in these pages in the coming months.

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Today, I’d like to reiterate NIDCR’s commitment to foundational research. Foundational, or basic research — the quest to decipher the fundamental processes of human biology and disease — is the indispensable bedrock on which treatments and cures are built. The beauty of foundational research is that it fuels translational and clinical advances in both straightforward and unpredictable ways. And insights into dental, oral, and craniofacial (DOC) biology drive discoveries throughout the rest of the body.

For example, NIDCR-funded work on the role of collagen-degrading enzymes in the breakdown of gum, tooth, and bone tissues in periodontal disease led to the development of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved drug, Periostat, that is now widely used to treat periodontal disease. Unexpectedly, scientists discovered that a slightly different formulation of that drug, now an FDA-approved medicine called Oracea, was also effective at treating rosacea.

NIDCR’s support of basic research has contributed to Nobel Prize-winning science that enabled development of mRNA vaccines, identified nerve receptors for touch and temperature, and revealed the role of telomeres in preventing DNA from degrading during cell division. It has elucidated the bidirectional relationship between oral and systemic health and disease. It is driving insights into better ways to treat head and neck cancers through immunotherapies and cancer vaccines. And it has revealed mechanisms underlying the development of temporomandibular disorders, their relationships to other systemic chronic morbidities, and their transition into chronic pain conditions.

Early seminal discoveries in NIDCR’s intramural program launched entire fields of research that continue to this day. NIDCR scientists were the first to demonstrate that tooth decay and periodontal disease are bacterial-driven infectious diseases, and they were the first to establish the concept of the microbiome, laying the groundwork for later research on the microbiome in other parts of the body. NIDCR intramural scientists pioneered early discoveries of how the body senses pain, determined the molecular mechanism that prevents HIV from being transmitted through saliva, and developed procedures to isolate and study human bone-forming cells in culture, techniques that were adopted by researchers around the world. In the 1980s, NIDCR scientists created Matrigel, a specialized gel that promotes cell growth on a 3D surface that mimics the environment within the body. Today, Matrigel is widely used in labs around the world to study cells that were previously impossible to grow. These studies have unearthed insights into nerve growth, the formation of blood vessels, and stem and cancer cell biology. Matrigel is also being used to screen cancer drugs and to support development of artificial tissues that can mimic organ function.

Decades of intramural and extramural research into the basic biology of salivary glands have spurred interventions to treat damaged or diseased glands, including drugs that stimulate saliva flow and an experimental gene therapy, currently in clinical testing, to correct salivary dysfunction and inform normal exocrine function.

More recently, intramural researchers contributed to the discovery of two new rare diseases (LINKED syndrome and VEXAS), showing how defects in ubiquitylation — a process that guides cell fate during embryo development — underlie disease development and could ultimately be targeted for treatment. Years of research in animals and humans to understand the mechanisms underlying fibrous dysplasia/McCune-Albright syndrome (FD/MAS), a rare disease that causes bone deformities, recently culminated in adult and pediatric clinical trials of a drug that shows promise for reducing bone abnormalities in FD/MAS.

These examples plainly demonstrate the vital importance of NIDCR basic research, both within the DOC field and beyond. Our commitment to foundational science is codified in the current NIDCR Strategic Plan, which emphasizes continued investment in fundamental research to sustain scientific excellence and advance the institute’s broader mission. And it is a stated goal of NIDCR’s next strategic plan, which is currently in development.

As we look toward the future and commence the strategic planning process, it is apparent that NIDCR has made great strides through its support for basic research. But that work is far from over — there is a growing need for science that not only builds on these foundations but also anticipates and responds to emerging public health challenges, technological advances, and evolving patient and community needs. Increasing evidence highlights the interconnectedness of DOC conditions with systemic health outcomes, underscoring the importance of integrating DOC research within broader biomedical and public health contexts. At the same time, a deeper understanding of the root causes of DOC diseases is essential to inform personalized prevention strategies and improve treatments. Recent advances in SI, data science, and multi-omics offer unprecedented opportunities to solve and translate basic research problems in much more nuanced and efficient ways and hold promise for accelerating the actualization of fundamental discoveries becoming interventions that improve health.

Without foundational research, translational and clinical advances that improve oral and overall health would be next to impossible. Bottom line: Basic science is essential for optimal health.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and insights. Reach out any time by emailing nidcrdirectormessage@mail.nih.gov.

With sincere gratitude,

Dr. Jennifer Webster-Cyriaque, Deputy Director