Lawrence Tabak was NIDCR director from 2000 to 2010, encouraging work on salivary gland biology and salivary diagnostics as well as research into the neuroscience of chronic pain and head and neck cancer. Tabak took NIDCR into the genomics revolution and adapted the Institute to social change with the first NIDCR health disparities plan. His Practice-Based Research Network (PBRN) initiative promoted greater scientific and programmatic involvement by practitioners.

Dental immunologist Dennis Mangan suspected the relation between persistent microbes and pathogens and human health. In 2002, while an NIDCR grants officer, Mangan founded the multi-institute Microbial Biofilms Research Program. After new technology made study of the entire microbiome feasible, Mangan became the first director of the NIH Human Microbiome Project, launched in 2007.

NIDCR funded expansion of the Dental Practice-Based Research Network, developed by the University of Alabama, Brimingham, to enable dentists and hygienists to conduct clinical studies of immediate practical value. To date the National Dental PBRN has enrolled more than 62,000 patients nationwide and has drawn practitioners more closely to NIDCR. Learn the history of the PBRN here.

Temporomandibular (TMD) Disorders were little understood when NIDCR began funding "Orofacial Pain: Prospective Evaluation and Risk Assessment," the first ever longitudinal study of a chronic pain condition. OPPERA established that TMD was much more than a localized dental/jaw disorder and that women were more likely than men to progress from an acute to a chronic condition. Read the initial results here.

Prepared by NIDCR in collaboration with the Office of the Surgeon General, Oral Health in America demonstrated that oral health is integral to general health. The report also stated that despite the availability of safe and effective means for maintaining oral health, poor oral health continued to disproportionately affect vulnerable populations.

NIDR scientists began studying pain during the 1950s. In 1983, Neurology and Anesthesiology Branch Chief Ronald Dubner convinced NIH to support the creation of a multi-institute, multidisciplinary pain clinic. The NIH Pain Research Clinic, managed by NIDR, was the first such center in the United States. Read more about pain research at NIDCR here.

During the 1960s sociologist Lois Cohen pioneered dental social science at the Public Health Service. Cohen took over Institute's fledgling program in 1976, applying social science research to the evaluation of NIDR's research programs and the production of its long-range plans. NIDCR-sponsored studies continue to explore fluoride skepticism, public aversion to dentistry, and practitioner resistance to disease diagnosis.

In June, Dr. Marie Ussing Nylen became Director of Intramural Research and NIH's first woman scientific director. A native of Denmark, Nylen first came to NIDR in 1949. Nylen pioneered electron microscopy of tooth enamel, made foundational observations regarding dental structure and development, and according to colleagues, "made pathways for similarly interested young women to follow."

In 1979, intramural scientist Pamela Gehron Robey, along with Max Planck researcher Rupert Timpl, reported the discovery of laminin, a glycoprotein found in the basement membranes that make up most structures in the body. Subsequent work by NIDR scientists determined that laminins promote cell adhesion and nerve growth. Read the groundbreaking paper here.

In 1985, John Termine, chief of the Mineralized Tissue Research Branch, and investigator Pamela Robey developed the standard method of culturing human bone-forming cells in vitro, making possible a host of later investigations into bone-related disorders. As discussed in this video, Robey and other NIDR scientists went on to link bone marrow stromal cells to diseases such as fibrous dysplasia.