Combining a strong tradition of clinical, epidemiological and public health research and a solid research base, Barts and The London is at the forefront of the advancement of dental care.
Leading Dentistry researchers
The results of the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) placed Barts and The London School of Medicine in the top 5 medical and dental schools in England for quality of research.
Professor Alan Boyde
Alan Boyde's current research is aimed at understanding bone and cartilage development, structure and function and responses to hormonal and drug challenges, impact exercise, aging, osteomalacia, osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, traumatic osteochondrosis, fatigue fracture, iatrogenic bone wounding (including dental and skeletal implants) and tumour metastases: and skeletal changes in genetically modified mice. It uses a wide range of imaging modalities from naked eye to sub-micron resolution. Dental hard tissue structure, development, disease and iatrogenic damage are also studied.
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Dr Graham Davis
Graham Davis's research centres on the development of X-ray microtomography and its application to the investigation of properties and processes in biological and man-made materials. Dr Davis is currently working on the design of a new generation of scanner and is the lead investigator on a £1.2M EPSRC funded project.
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Professor Farida Fortune
Farida Fortune is Professor of Medicine in Relation to Oral Health and Director of the Institute of Dentistry. In addition to an active role in oral cancer research she focuses on the aetiopathogenesis of Behcet’s disease, oral Crohn’s disease and oral-submucous fibrosis and related systemic diseases of immune dysfunction in the mouth. She has established one of the largest patient bases of these conditions which has facilitated the analysis of the immunogenetics of these multisystem diseases to identify the role of genetic polymorphisms in their aetiology and immunopathogenesis.
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Dr Virginia Kingsmill
Dr Virginia Kingsmill, Clinical Senior Lecturer, was awarded a Department of Health Clinician Scientist Fellowship award to compare the structure, mineralisation and remodelling of the mandible with that of other bones with the long term aim of understanding the processes and mechanisms of alveolar bone remodelling indentate and edentulous jaws and the response to systemic regulatory factors.
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Dr Helen Liversidge
Teeth begin to develop before birth and continue up to root completion of the wisdom tooth in early adulthood. Every normal individual goes through a sequence of dental events and the developing dentition is a useful tool to estimate age. Dr Liversidge's research relates to new reference studies on radiographic tooth stages, how tooth formation is measured and how this can be applied to archaeology, forensic science and paediatric dentistry.
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Professor Wagner Marcenes
Marcenes' research programme has concentrated on establishing a new paradigm to further elucidate oral health inequalities from the social environment, through psychosocial factors, exploring behavioural and biological pathways to oral health. The main focus is on socio-psychological protective and risk factors and their interaction with upstream (i.e.: environment) and downstream (i.e.: behaviour) factors. His innovative research programme includes the first comprehensible study showing a relationship between oral health and socio-psychological circumstances.
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Professor Ken Parkinson
Ken Parkinson is Professor of Head and Neck Cancer. His research, funded through the European Union and BBSRC, is focussed on the mechanisms of oral keratinocyte immortalisation and the influence of telomere dysfunction in oral cancer. His work has lead to the hypothesis that oral squamous cell carcinomas may progress by two distinct routes only one of which leads to cellular immortalisation. Professor Parkinson won the Golden Award at the European Head and Neck Cancer meeting in 2003.
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Dr Muy-Teck Teh
Dr Muy-Teck Teh is a Lecturer in head and neck cancer. His research interests are focused on finding new biomarker genes for predicting early oral cancer formation. Currently studies are based around a known cancer gene called FOXM1B using human oral keratinocytes cells as the research model. Early results have showed that FOXM1B may be an early cancer marker which is expressed at higher level in pre-cancer and cancer cells compared to normal cells. The future aim is to develop a diagnostic test using the Gene Chip technology that can guide treatment strategy.
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