On October 2, grantee Drew Weissmann shared the Nobel Prize with Katalin Karikó for development of messenger RNA vaccines. In 2005, Weissman and Karikó overcame a technical hurdle that had previously prevented the safe use of mRNA vaccines. Their breakthrough made it possible to develop and deploy COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year.

On October 4, grantees David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian shared the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecules (ion channels) that allow us to sense heat, cold, and touch. Julius identified the type of ion channel that enables us to sense “heat” from high temperatures and spicy foods. Separately, Patapoutian identified the ion channel that conveys the sensation of being physically touched.

In March, NIDCR launched the Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Tissue Regeneration Consortium (DOCTRC). The consortium aims to leverage a variety of strategies to regrow and restore function to dental, oral, and craniofacial tissues, including gums, bone, skin, nerves, and salivary glands. 

Along with two other researchers, NIDCR grantee Elizabeth Blackburn discovered that telomeres, the end caps of chromosomes, keep DNA from degrading during cell division and identified telomerase, the enzyme that produces them. For insights with profound implications for cancer treatment and the study of aging, Blackburn received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in Stockholm in December.

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.