During the 1990s intramural researcher Bruce Baum turned insights from gene therapy into a treatment for dry mouth caused by radiation treatment. Baum and John Chiorini produced an adenovirus vector for introducing a water-producing gene into salivary glands. After successful 2008 clinical trials, Chiorini took the therapy through FDA safety trials. Baum's team published in late 2012. Read more in the NIH Catalyst.

Launched in October, the FaceBase Consortium brought together eleven grantee institutions to generate orofacial data from animal and human models and make it available to all craniofacial researchers. Curated by the University of Southern California, FaceBase contains genetic information involved in common developmental diseases like cleft lip and palate.

Martha Somerman became NIDCR's first woman director in 2011. An expert in the body's ability to repair itself, Somerman launched the Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Tissue Regenerative Consortium (DOCTRC) to advance this work. She also led pioneering studies of temporomandibular disease. Somerman continued to promote workforce diversity and fight disparities and turned to social problems such as vaping before retiring in 2019.

In April, the NIDCR Salivary Disorders Unit under Blake Warner, teaming with many other institutions, launched a study on the role of the oral cavity in the spread and transmission of COVID-19. By September, the study had determined that saliva testing was as effective as nasal swabs, the viral load in saliva correlated with loss of taste in COVID patients, and that masking minimized transmission.

Rena D'Souza, a specialist in craniofacial development and regenerative medicine, served as Director of NIDCR from 2020 to 2025. An early initiative was promoting the Surgeon General's report Oral Health in America. D'Souza steered NIDCR through the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2023 oversaw the launch of PRIMED, AHEAD, and IMPACT, innovative programs to boost practice-based research in dental schools, fight TMD, and battle head and neck cancer.

From the beginning, Institute leaders sought to extend the NIDR beyond dentistry and had long sponsored craniofacial research of all types. To commemorate its 50^th Anniversary, Director Harold Slavkin, with help from the American Dental Association, persuaded Congress to rename the institute the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), effective October 21. View an interview with Dr. Slavkin here.

In September, NIDR launched its Regional Research Centers for Minority Oral Health Initiative. Intended to strengthen minority representation in the field, the regional centers were partnerships between minority programs and larger research-intensive institutions. The NIDR minority research centers were the first created by an NIH institute and the model for subsequent efforts.

Harold Slavkin became director in 1995, stepping up research in oral cancer, genetics, craniofacial defects, promoting tissue engineering, and expanding the centers program. Slavkin fostered new institutional partnerships, coordinating with dental practitioners and patient advocacy groups, leading NIH efforts to diversify the workforce, and pushing to rename NIDR the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). He retired in 2000.

During the 1980s, it became increasingly clear that HIV-AIDS did not spread through saliva, but the mechanism was unknown. During the early 1990s a team including Stephen Eisenberg of Synergen, Inc., and Tessie McNeely and Sharon Wahl of the NIDR Laboratory of Immunology discovered the protein, secretory leukocyte protease inhibitor (SLPI), that blocks salivary transmission of HIV. They announced their discovery in early 1995.

Before the 1980s it was difficult to grow three-dimensional cells in vitro. Then NIDR scientist Hynda Kleinman produced a viscous matrix derived from a mouse tumor which proved receptive to the growth and differentiation of cells of many types. NIH applied for a patent in 1985. Known as Matrigel®, Kleinman's innovation remains the industry standard today.