Dental School Displays Excellence at Research Day
By James B. Han
Staff Writer
On October 8, the UCSF School of Dentistry (SOD) celebrated its 7th Annual Research & Clinical Excellence Day (RCED). Since its inception in 2003, RCED has served as a platform to showcase the talents and accomplishments of UCSF SOD students, residents and post-doctoral fellows. It is one of the School’s most important events and includes awards recognizing faculty research, clinical excellence by a faculty member and mentor of the year.
This year’s recipient of Outstanding Clinician Award was W. Stephan Eakle, DDS. Dr. Eakle is highly esteemed faculty who has served the SOD for more than 30 years. Jane Weintraub, DDS, MPH, was recognized in the Faculty Research Lecturer category. The John Greene Society awarded Brent Lin, DDS, MS, the Mentor of the Year award.
RCED involved oral and poster presentations by students, residents and fellows. Their research presentations were judged by a committee consisting of faculty and Ph.D. candidates.
The list of winners is as follows:
Post Doc/Resident Category:
1st Place - Adriane Joo, PhD
2nd Place - Rungnapa Warotayanont, DDS, PhD
3rd Place - Yoshi Shen, DDS, MS
Graduate category:
1st Place - Chi Viet
2nd Place - Erin Ealba, DDS
3rd Place - Joshua Emrick
Pre-Doc category:
1st Place - Rebecca Schnitt
2nd Place - Evan Shipp
3rd Place - Shirin Mullen and Andrew Weeks
Chi Viet, a fourth year dental student, received the 1st Place distinction for the third time in four years. (Including, Alexander Nee’s 1st Place distinction in 2008, the SOD Class of 2010 students have garnered 1st Place honors all four years.).
Viet’s award winning research project involved using a drug named zebularine to treat patients suffering from oral squamous cell carinoma (SCC). She explains: “Zebularine is a methylation inhibitor drug, meaning that it has the ability to demethylate genes. It is the first methylation inhibitor drug that could be given per oral. Our experiments have shown that zebularine is able to significantly decrease cancer proliferation and pain in a mouse oral SCC model. I hope that these results could be translated from bench top to bedside, to benefit patient care.”
The UCSF SOD’s Associate Dean for Research, Dr. Richard Jordan, describes the day’s event as follows: “This year Research & Clinical Excellence Day proved once again that the caliber of discovery at UCSF is second to none and that excellence and high achievement by the finest students in the country is the rule and not the exception.”
Research is allowing dentistry to head toward better patient care, and RCED is a great day of celebration for the entire UCSF campus that encourages interdisciplinary research projects, many of which were presented during this year’s RCED.
James B. Han is a fourth-year dental student
This article appeared in the October 15, 2009 issue of Synapse.