We are very excited on continuing our work on host-microbial interactions with the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program Award, entitled: CAREER: Modeling and Decoding Host-Microbiome Interactions in Gingival Tissue. 

This CAREER project targets the development of an in vitro gingival tissue system to study the role of microbial communities on human oral health and disease, with potential repercussion on diverse pathologies such as periodontitis, atopic dermatitis, asthma, and inflammatory bowel disease. In addition to representing a large population and economic market, these chronic diseases are emergent drivers of global socioeconomic status. The vision of this CAREER project will be accomplished by: (i) the development and validation of a microphysiological system to study oral host-pathogens interactions and microbiome biogeography under different clinical conditions (healthy, gingivitis and periodontitis); (ii) the engineering of an inflamed gingivitis model based on human primary neutrophils to identify a clinical fingerprint for early dysbiosis presentation; and (iii) a periodontitis model based on activated B and T lymphocytes and clinically driven tissue characteristics to investigate the effect of lipid mediators on inflammation resolution and induced changes on the established polymicrobial community.
In addition, the goal of the project's educational plan, called ResAx, is to provide a working model to address the drop in enrollment in low resources academic institutions that could be transposed to other research areas, providing opportunities to expand research access and education to undergraduate students enrolled in the BME curriculum at University of Massachusetts Lowell and to support a paid Summer Training Program for rising junior high school students in the local Lowell community.

Congratulations to Miryam Adelfio, Ph.D. for successfully defending her thesis in Biomedical Engineering and Biotechnology, titled “Sustaining Long-Term Host-Microbiome Interactions in a Physiologically Relevant Gingival Tissue Model In Vitro.” We are so proud of you, Dr. Adelfio!