The oral microbiome is one of the best-known, yet by 2008 only about half of the 774 species that make it up had been studied. On March 1, NIDCR-sponsored researchers launched the Human Oral Microbiome Database (HOMD), a web-accessible source of detailed information intended to spur collaborative efforts to identify which biofilm microbes affect human health and disease.

David Barmes was a global health leader at the World Health Organization (WHO) and NIDCR. After his death is 2001, NIDCR, along with the NIH Fogarty International Center, launched an NIH lecture series focused on global health. Lecturers have included philanthropist Bill Gates, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, and humanitarian physician Paul Farmer.

On October 1, NIDCR announced creation of five Centers for Research to Reduce Oral Health Disparities. The centers identified diseases and factors involved in their spread and targeted them with community-based interventions. In 2015, the effort was converted to the Multidisciplinary and Collaborative Research Consortium to Reduce Oral Health Disparities in Children.

This year, NIDR established four Oral Cancer Research Centers to improve prevention, detection, and therapy. NIDR and the National Cancer Institute funded centers at the University of Alabama; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Chicago; and Northwestern University. NIDR alone funded a fourth center at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

In 1979, Abner Notkins and colleagues in the Laboratory of Oral Medicine determined that a virus was at least partially responsible for type 1 diabetes. Seventeen years later, Notkins and Michael Lan identified a gene that encoded a protein well before the onset of the disease. This became a standard indicator for high risk of juvenile diabetes. Read more about Notkins in the NIH Record.

Unlike medical students, aspiring dental researchers often paid for postgraduate training out of pocket. In 1984, NIDR instituted the Dentist Scientist Award, a five-year program consisting of basic and clinical training and supervised research. After opening the doors to new investigators for more than a decade, the award was replaced by more specialized grants.

During NIDR’s first decade, most funding went to intramural research. But from 1956 to 1957 Congress almost tripled the NIDR budget, enabling the institute to scale up its extramural program from 114 to more than 300 projects. For the first time, extramural funding included training grants and covered broad disciplines including pathology, bacteriology, and epidemiology.