More than 100 attend UCSF event.

Elizabeth Mertz, UC San Francisco

UC San Francisco School of Dentistry‘s Global Oral Health Symposium 2012 repeated and expanded on the success of last year’s inaugural event, bringing greater visibility to vital oral health issues worldwide, and the extraordinary international effort to address them.

Nearly 100 campus and visiting participants — including some from China, Germany and India — attended the second annual Global Oral Health Day and Symposium at UCSF on April 23.

“This second event confirms UCSF’s leading role on global oral health,” says John S. Greenspan, B.Sc., B.D.S., Ph.D., associate dean for global oral health at UCSF, which aims to improve oral and craniofacial health worldwide.

Named to lead UCSF’s Global Oral Health program in October 2010, Greenspan is working to build, strengthen and coordinate activities in global oral health, develop and support programs of excellence in global oral health sciences and international health within the school, and interact with UCSF campus, systemwide and other initiatives in global health through educational, research and public service programs.

This year’s symposium, themed “Workforce Issues for Global Oral Health,” featured a keynote speech by Jaime Sepulveda, M.D., M.P.H., Dr.Sc., director of global health   sciences, who discussed the Lancet Commission’s November 2010 report on the education of health professionals.

The Lancet Commission report, was critical of the state of professional health education today, which it found to be “fragmented, outdated, and static curricula that produce ill-equipped graduates.”

“That is why this commission, consisting of 20 professional and academic leaders from diverse countries, came together to develop a shared vision and a common strategy for postsecondary education in medicine, nursing and public health that reaches beyond the confines of national borders and the silos of individual professions. The commission adopted a global outlook, a multiprofessional perspective, and a systems approach,” the report states.

UCSF Global Health Sciences (GHS) is also taking a global outlook to improve the education of health professionals and address health disparities. Last September, GHS hosted a symposium, “Transforming Health Education Globally,” which coincided with Sepulveda’s first week at UCSF and built on the initiatives conceived at a 2007 forum that he led at UCSF.

Sepulveda wants to make global health an integral part of interprofessional health education and to boost support for the institutions that educate health professionals in other countries. “GHS is poised to take on an increasingly important role in this effort, in the same way that UCSF and San Francisco have been renowned for 30 years for the world-class model they developed to combat HIV/AIDS,” Sepulveda said in the GHS annual report [PDF].

Addressing oral health around the globe

Dean Tao Xu of Peking University’s School of Stomatology explored recent changes and future trends in oral health in China. Daniel Davidson, D.M.D., president of the California Dental Association (CDA), discussed the November 2011 CDA report on access to care.

Research shows that nearly 10 million Californians — including low-income children, the elderly and people with disabilities — face barriers to accessing the dental care they need, the CDA report states. “Barriers are multifactorial, influenced by economics, culture, education and geography — a complex problem with no single solution.”

The CDA’s report, “Phased Strategies for Reducing the Barriers to Dental Care in California,” [PDF] outlines a three-phased approach, each with multiple recommendations to establish state orgal health leadership, focus on prevention and early intervention for children and an innovative dental delivery system to expand capacity in California.

And Habib Benzian from Germany, senior advisor of Fit for School in the Philippines and director of the Health Bureau Global Health Consultants, shared broad insights into global oral care workforce issues.

UCSF speakers were Peter Loomer, D.D.S., Ph.D., an assistant professor of periodontology in the UCSF Department of Orofacial Sciences, and Susan Fisher-Owens, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant clinical professor in the UCSF School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics.

Bruce Donoff, D.M.D., M.D., dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, oriented the group to the program in global oral health that he is building at Harvard.

Following the panel discussion that concluded the day, UCSF School of Dentistry’s Caroline Shibosk, D.D.S., M.P.H., Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Orofacial Sciences, was recognized with the Faculty Award for Achievement in Global Oral Health, and UCSF Dentistry Graduate Program D.D.S./Ph.D. student Benjamin Chaffee was recognized with the Student Award for Achievement in Global Oral Health.

Related link:
UCSF Dentistry | Global Oral Health

Multiple strengths identified during site visit.

Preliminary conclusions of the American Dental Association’s Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) tell a positive story about the UC San Francisco School of Dentistry in its 131st year.

At the end of the self-study process, the CODA site visit team found that the UCSF School of Dentistry is in compliance with all the predoctoral standards and the postgraduate program standards for endodontics, orthodontics, pediatric dentistry, periodontology, prosthodontics, oral medicine and general practice residency.

Established in 1975, CODA serves the public by establishing, maintaining and applying standards that ensure the quality and continuous improvement of dental and dental-related education and reflect the evolving practice of dentistry. CODA is nationally recognized by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit dental and dental-related education programs conducted at the postsecondary level.

During a site visit to the UCSF School of Dentistry from April 10-12, the CODA team identified multiple strengths within the dental school as a whole and within individual programs, singling out several program chairs for their leadership and characterizing the quality of UCSF dentistry students as “exceptional.”

The DDS (including IDP) Predoctoral Education Program was described by the CODA report in strongly positive terms: exceptional students and basic science, extremely strong research and outstanding financial management and use of resources.

The CODA site visit team also cited the school’s “spirit of cooperation at all levels,” creating an environment of respect and cooperation.

During a recent town hall meeting, Dean John Featherstone credited a few individuals for their contributions toward making the accreditation process a resounding success, including the accreditation steering committee, the dean’s office staff, predoctoral clinic staff and faculty, IT staff and faculty, and facilities staff.

The dean gave “special accolades for Associate Dean for Education and Student Affairs Dorothy Perry and her entire team,” after which Perry — who led the accreditation process again, having led a similarly successful process in 2005 — was given a standing ovation.

“All of us — everyone in the school, working together, made this wonderful outcome possible,” Featherstone said.

UC Berkeley student, aspiring oral surgeon, promotes “Super Star Smiles” for children.

University of California, Berkeley, student Hường Trần has such a dazzling smile, it’s hard to imagine she hasn’t always been flashing that 1,000-volt grin.

But Trần, a 21-year-old integrative biology major and aspiring oral surgeon, underwent numerous medical and oral surgeries and bone grafts starting at age one to repair a bilateral cleft lip and palate. She said it wasn’t until she turned 17 that she had a smile to share with the world.

Hường Trần smiles as she hugs stuffed animals that are part of the "Super Star Smiles" roadshow that she and other UC Berkeley students take to East Bay schools to teach youngsters about dental health.

“When I finally looked in the mirror, it was amazing. A smile can really make a difference,” Trần said.

Now, Trần said she is “paying it forward” with a free program she helped design and named “Super Star Smiles.” The super star part of the title, she says, refers to her heroes  – the many surgeons, orthodontists and others, including  a UCLA orthodontist who suggested she apply to UC Berkeley, who helped make her smile possible.

In the fall of 2010, at the suggestion of a friend who is an undergraduate education minor, Trần enrolled in Education 190, a course at the Graduate School of Education that teaches undergraduates education theory and sends them into local schools to implement self-designed field study projects.

“I fell in love with it,” Trần said. “The class is a great opportunity to discovery your own passion and blend class theory with practice.”

With the class as a springboard, she developed a volunteer program in which UC Berkeley students teach basic dental hygiene and good nutrition to youngsters from preschool through second grade in underserved East Bay communities. They visit classrooms for 30 minutes a few times each semester. This spring, Trần and her volunteers are visiting an afterschool program operated by Girls Inc., at Wilson Elementary School in San Leandro.

More kids need this kind of information and support than ever, said Trần.  California’s economic downturn has led to reduced government services and made dental care out of reach for parents struggling to feed their families.

Trần said she was lucky, because her corrective treatments were underwritten by charitable organizations and state agencies that, just a few years back, could help more needy children than today.

Through interaction with her oral surgeons and other doctors, she learned tips about everyday dental health that said she wouldn’t have learned from her parents, one who left school after sixth grade and the other who never attended school.

Her family moved to the United States after the Vietnam War and for years depended on food giveaway programs that didn’t always offer the healthiest of foods, she said.  “Growing up, I loved sugar – I just loved it and ate it by the spoonful,” said Trần, adding that her mother didn’t know it wasn’t good for her.

Today, when teaching schoolkids good dental care, Trần and her friends come equipped with plaster models of the mouth, large and loveable stuffed animals with very large teeth loaned by the Cal Pre-Dental Society, and child-sized toothbrushes provided by the Berkeley Free Clinic. They show youngsters the best way to brush and floss, and have them practice their newly learned toothbrushing skills on the toy models.

Education professor John Hurst began Ed 190 courses at UC Berkeley in 1990 as a requirement for the undergraduate education minor. He has seen hundreds of students develop great volunteer projects to take into the community.  Of those undergraduates, he said, “Huong Trần is one of my heroes.”

Trần, a member of UC Berkeley’s Biology Scholars Program, which aims to improve diversity in the sciences, modestly said Super Star Smiles is one way “to give back for all the help I’ve received … just a small thing I created.”  Some day, she said, she would like to launch her own free dental clinic, or work in one.

Trần’s family moved from Lawndale to Vallejo in Northern California when she was in high school.  All five of her siblings have college degrees or are working toward one, she said, at the urging of their parents.

When Trần is not in class, hiking or biking, she volunteers at the Berkeley Free Clinic and works as a peer academic counselor at the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) offered by UC Berkeley’s Student Life Advising Services. The EOP helps low-income, underrepresented minorities, who often are the first in their families to attend college.

Thanks to a nomination by Hurst for Trần’s work with Super Star Smiles and the Berkeley Free Clinic, Trần is a winner of this year’s Chancellor’s Undergraduate Student Award for Civic Engagement. She will receive the award in an April 30 ceremony at UC Berkeley’s Sibley Auditorium.

Trần also is working to arrange the financing for a trip to Vietnam in late May or early June, traveling with a health care professional to take her message of dental health to youngsters in the central part of the country, where her own family lived before coming to California.

Meanwhile, the EOP website features a cheery photo of Trần and a special post: “My childhood dream job was to become an ice cream woman; to make the world happier with one scoop at a time. But I realized my true calling in life is to become a dentist to make the world more beautiful with one smile at a time.”

Santorum, Maddow, Colbert are wrong about UCSF.

UCSF dates its founding to 1864, when South Carolina surgeon Hugh Toland founded a private medical school in San Francisco. Above, nurses stand inside an operating room at UC Hospital in 1913.

Let the record reflect: American history is indeed taught at the University of California, San Francisco.

After presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently stated that American history was no longer offered at most UC campuses, reporters at several media outlets were quick to set the record straight. Several, including television hosts Rachel Maddow and Steven Colbert, pointed out that only one UC campus does not teach history — UCSF.

They got it wrong, too.

When UCSF history professor Dorothy Porter, Ph.D., heard MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow’s story on Tuesday night, she couldn’t react quickly enough.

“I know that Rachel likes to get her facts absolutely correct, so I sent off an email as soon as I could find an address for the show,” Porter said. Her message, reinforced by other UCSF history professors reached for comment this week, was simple: history is alive and well at UCSF.

The history of history at UCSF

History classes at UCSF have been around since the Great Depression, first taught to aspiring medical students in 1930. The university has offered degrees in history since the civil rights era, minting the Ph.D. program in the History of Health Sciences in 1965.

Today both master’s and doctoral degrees in the subject are offered through the university’s Department of Anthropology, History & Social Medicine. UCSF is, in fact, the only campus within the entire UC system that offers a doctoral degree in the history of the health sciences. Its scholars focus on both American and world history and contribute to our understanding of the conditions that make modern medicine what it is today.

“In our graduate programs, American history is not only taught — it is required,” said Brian Dolan, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of the department and the director of the graduate programs in history of health sciences.

Elective courses are available for the entire student body at UCSF’s four professional schools, whether in medicine, pharmacy, nursing or dentistry.

These courses offer a rich exploration of some of the key social, cultural, economic, and political contexts of American and world history — the development of medical science and technology in America, the development of the medical profession in the United States, and the history of therapies developed in America. Specialized courses include psychiatry in the United States, the history of American medicine, 20th century American medicine, and the history of social movements in America.

“Historical understanding of both scientific and health care breakthroughs and mistakes can provide enormous benefit to the health science and care that we are doing today,” said Nancy Milliken, M.D., vice dean of the UCSF School of Medicine, director of the UCSF Center of Excellence in Women’s Health and acting chair of the Department of Anthropology, History & Social Medicine.

“Informed by this perspective,” she added, “our students can be better prepared to advance health worldwide and contribute to collaborative science and systems of care.”

Related links:

• History of Medicine and Health Sciences Program at UCSF
• UCSF Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine
• A History of UCSF

UCSF’s annual forum focuses on health concerns.

Student organizers helped ensure the success of UCSF's fourth annual LGBT health forum.

For the fourth consecutive year, the UC San Francisco Center for LGBT Health & Equity convened a health forum, attracting 200 interprofessional health students for two days of education about the long-overlooked health concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex (LGTBQI) people.

The 2012 forum held earlier this month highlighted two major developments in LGBT health since the 2011 meeting: the publication of an Institute of Medicine report on LGBT health concerns and the release of a groundbreaking “Field Guide” to best practices in LGBT patient-centered care by the Joint Commission, the accrediting body for the nation’s hospitals.

“Attention to LGBT health has skyrocketed since we held the first forum in 2009,” said Shane Snowdon, director of the UCSF Center for LGBT Health & Equity, which has convened the forum annually and served as project adviser for the Joint Commission’s LGBT Field Guide. “That’s no coincidence: UCSF has been a national leader in highlighting LGBT health needs and educating health professionals about them.”

This year’s forum, planned in conjunction with the UCSF LGBTQ Student Association, featured the UC premiere of “Gen Silent,” a powerful film about the challenges faced by LGBT elders. “The generation that fought hardest to come out is going back in . . . to survive,”  the film states.

A screening of the film, which moved many viewers to tears, was followed by a question-and-answer sessions with Seth Kilbourn, director of Openhouse, the non-profit that serves LGBT seniors in San Francisco.

The forum featured multiple workshops on LGBT health topics, a panel of LGBTQI patients speaking candidly about their health care experiences, and keynotes by Snowdon, noted sex educator Carol Queen and Darin Latimore, M.D., assistant dean for student and resident diversity at UC Davis School of Medicine.

Latimore also participated in a well-attended panel of health professionals discussing their individual journeys as “out” practitioners.

Students from UCSF’s schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy and physical therapy were joined by students from other institutions at the sold-out event, which offered elective credit. Evaluations of the forum were overwhelmingly positive, with many attendees indicating that it had significantly heightened their awareness of LGBT concerns in health care and beyond.

Many attendees shared the sentiments of a student who said, “I never really thought about whether my friends’ sexual orientation was important with respect to run-of-the-mill conversations, and I didn’t realize there were significant health implications associated with their sexuality. I think I’ll be asking more questions to encourage disclosure when I’m providing health care. Additionally, I think I’ll make fewer assumptions about other people, including my friend and family.”

Attendees also expressed appreciation for the attention paid to transgender health needs at the forum. “I feel more comfortable working with LGBTQI patients now, and have greatly improved knowledge about transgender health issues,” said an attendee. “I wish this forum was required for all students!”

Snowdon, who lectures on LGBTQI health in all of UCSF’s schools, notes that forum attendance has quadrupled since 2009, reflecting students’ intensifying interest in the subject. “When I became LGBT director in 1999, we could only dream of selling out a 200-student forum. I give our busy students tremendous credit for spending a weekend learning about LGBT health needs — their interest means a lot.”

Impact includes caring for uninsured patients, training professionals and conducting research.

For the first time, University of California Health has measured the collective impact it has in caring for uninsured patients, educating tomorrow’s health leaders and advancing science to tackle medicine’s toughest challenges.

The estimated community benefit of UC Health’s five medical centers totaled $3.3 billion last year.

“As a public university and cornerstone of the safety net, UC Health is committed to serve California’s health needs,” said Dr. John Stobo, UC senior vice president for health sciences and services.” Our combined community benefit demonstrates the powerful impact UC Health has as a system.”

Throughout UC Health, student-run clinics collaborate across their campuses and within their communities to treat patients from the working poor to the homeless and their pets. UC’s three nurse-run clinics provide compassionate care to underserved patients in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Francisco. UC’s innovative Programs in Medical Education (PRIME) train doctors where they are most needed with programs focused on rural health and telemedicine (UC Davis), the Latino community (UC Irvine), the diverse disadvantaged (UCLA, UC Riverside), the San Joaquin Valley (UC Merced, UC Davis, UCSF), health equity (UC San Diego), and the urban underserved (UCSF, UC Berkeley).

UC Health has the nation’s largest health sciences educational system, with 18 professional schools and programs on seven campuses. Its community impact is felt in all corners of the state, through telemedicine services, clinical trials, classroom collaborations and affiliations such as UCLA’s partnership with the Venice Family Clinic, the nation’s largest free clinic.

Community benefits include programs or activities that improve access to care, enhance community health, advance medical knowledge and reduce the burden of government or other community efforts.

Here is a breakdown of UC Health’s community benefit in fiscal 2011, with totals from the health sciences campuses that have medical centers – UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Diego and UCSF:

-Charity care and unreimbursed care: $560.7 million
Free medical services for patients who had no source of payment for urgently needed care and the unpaid cost of Medicare, Medi-Cal, State Children’s Health Insurance Program, indigent care programs and other safety net programs.

-Education: $174.7 million
Health professions education encompasses teaching physicians, nurses and students as well as scholarships and funding for education.

-Donations/sponsorships: $1.8 million
Through financial and in-kind contributions, UC Health offers support to community organizations to improve community health.

-Research: $2.6 billion
UC research gives local residents access to the latest treatments and therapies for advanced illness and complex health conditions.

For more information, view UC Health’s community impact brochure.

Related links:

• UC Davis community benefit report
• UC San Diego community benefit fact sheet
• UCSF: committed to the city
  

Students, faculty give free dental care and education Feb. 18 during annual “Give Kids A Smile” program.

Brent Lin, UC San Francisco

Stephanie Peralta brings her four children to the UC San Francisco School of Dentistry Clinic at Parnassus all the way from Livermore. They make the 45-mile journey across the Bay Bridge to get free dental care provided by UCSF dental students and clinical faculty members.

“I constantly tell them their teeth are going to fall out if they don’t brush their teeth,” she said. “It’s hard to get them to get in good habits of brushing their teeth and continue doing it every day.”

This Saturday (Feb. 18), the UCSF School of Dentistry is hosting its annual “Give Kids A Smile” program from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., offering free dental service to kids ages 4-17 – the same age range as Peralta’s children.

“The older ones are definitely role models for my youngest daughter,” Peralta said. “So if my older ones are brushing their teeth, the little one will want to get in the bathroom and do it herself.”

The goal of the community outreach program is not only to provide dental service, but to educate children about proper brushing and flossing techniques.

“Some common misconceptions of dental health include that tooth decay is a natural part of getting older,” said Brent Lin, DMD, clinical professor at the UCSF School of Dentistry. “That’s not true. Tooth decay is not inevitable.”

Approximately 45 million people, or more than a quarter of all Americans, have no dental coverage. Dental decay is one of the most common chronic illnesses among children. Although most dental diseases are preventable, many children unnecessarily suffer because of inadequate home care and lack of access to dental services, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“Good oral health starts when the patient is very young,” Lin said. “We suggest that expectant mothers get their teeth checked because their oral health could impact their child’s health while he or she is still in the womb.”

An estimated 51 million school hours per year are lost in the U.S. because of dental-related illness. Poor oral health has been related to decreased school performance, poor social relationships and less success later in life, according to the CDC.

“Children miss a lot of school because of toothache or dental appointments and they have a hard time focusing on their work because of discomfort from dental pain. It can greatly impact one’s quality of life,” Lin said. “We take this opportunity to make the public aware of the importance of good oral health and how we can prevent teeth-related diseases.”

And this opportunity can make a world of a difference for many Bay Area families.

“Especially being a low-income parent I think it’s important there are programs like this out there that can offer free services,” Peralta said. “We’re grateful to UCSF.”

UCSF’s Ling Zhan is an emerging leader in use of xylitol to prevent tooth decay in children.

Ling Zhan, UC San Francisco

Pediatric dentist Ling Zhan, D.D.S., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the UCSF School of Dentistry, is building a path to something children and parents the world over welcome: fewer cavities.

Cavities are the number one infectious disease in children in the U.S. Every year, nearly $4.5 billion is spent to treat them and about 1.6 million school days are missed annually related to dental decay. The prevalence of this disease is five times higher than asthma.

Zhan is an emerging leader in the use of xylitol, a naturally occurring sugar alcohol, to prevent tooth decay in children. Research shows that the sweet-tasting substance, which is extracted from the fibers of fruits, vegetables and other vegetation, have the potential to prevent cavities. Xylitol, commercially used as a sugar substitute, is lower in calories than sucrose and appears to diminish the negative dental effects of oral bacteria.

Many of the children Zhan sees in her research and clinic are suffering from significant tooth decay.

“In the traditional dental clinic, we’re normally only fixing the cavities, but not treating the cause,” Zhan said. “I’m a dentist, but also a dental scientist. Cavities can be readily prevented, and I want to see if there’s anything I can apply from basic science to fix this.”

In a recent study, Zhan and her team found that xylitol can prevent cavities in infants. In the findings, which Zhan presented in the 2nd International Conference on Novel Anticaries and Remineralizing Agents, infants whose gums were wiped daily with xylitol by their parents had nearly eight times fewer dental carries after one year than those who used wipes without xylitol. The study will be published in the Journal of Dental Research later this year.

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Stem cell research by UCSF’s Ophir Klein targets craniofacial abnormalities.

Look at the teeth on the lab specimen here. Is this the work of a mad scientist?

It’s true that UCSF’s Ophir Klein, M.D., Ph.D., was quite satisfied to have produced mice with incisors that more closely resemble woolly mammoth tusks than the more modest choppers sported by your average Mus musculus.

Ophir Klein, UC San Francisco

And he is indeed a laboratory scientist – a fast-rising one and the recipient of a highly competitive, $2.3 million Director’s New Innovator Award fron the National Institutes of Health. But Klein also is a practicing medical geneticist, part of a UCSF clinical team that aims to better diagnose and treat dental and facial abnormalities in young patients.

The mouse studies are a way to learn more about how such disfiguring developments arise. Klein also hopes to use the knowledge gained to develop strategies for regenerating tissues, including teeth, for use in new treatments.

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SF HIP aims to connect UCSF’s research capital with community partners to improve health.

UCSF's Kevin Grumbach (left) and Laura Schmidt (right) at SF HIP coordinating council meeting

UC San Francisco and an array of community, academic and civic collaborators are wrapping up the first year of an ambitious effort to build partnerships to enhance the well-being of San Francisco residents and eliminate health disparities.

San Francisco Health Improvement Partnerships (SF HIP), a cross-cutting initiative of the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI), aims to connect the university’s research capital with the expertise and needs of community partners. The goal is to implement strategies to measurably impact health in San Francisco — and to promote health equity along the way.

“In the past, research has often been seen as unilaterally serving the needs of the researchers rather than the community,” said Kevin Grumbach, M.D., co-director of CTSI’s Community Engagement and Health Policy (CEHP) Program. “SF HIP is an effort to do it differently; to have the outcome not be theoretical, but rather a discrete and sustainable change in community health.”

SF HIP is conducted in a spirit of participatory research with oversight by its Coordinating Council. Community partners include representatives from CTSI, the San Francisco Department of Public Health, San Francisco Unified School District, San Francisco Hospital Council, Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, and health equity coalitions representing the African American, Latino and Asian/Pacific Islander communities. CTSI’s CEHP program serves as the administrative core of the initiative and provides planning funds.

“SF HIP brings UCSF and its resources closer to the community, and all the important stakeholders together to improve community health,” said Amor Santiago, DPM, MPH, executive director of APA Family Support Services, and representative of the Asian/Pacific Islander Health Parity Coalition on the SF HIP Coordinating Council. “This effort has the potential to lead and coordinate public health efforts across the spectrum of providers in medical, mental and social health emphasizing prevention.”

So far, SF HIP working groups have been launched to focus on four pressing needs: physical activity and nutrition, hepatitis B, alcohol abuse and dental caries in children.

“Part of this effort involves laying a foundation for long-term collaboration,” said Ellen Goldstein, M.A., program manager of the CEHP program. “That includes developing an ongoing framework for UCSF to productively engage with a wide range of community partners to tackle our city’s most compelling health problems.”

[Related: View more about UCSF's commitment to the community]

SF HIP is part of UCSF’s expansive community service efforts that span outreach in local, regional and global communities.

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UCLA researchers demonstrate that new cells can be triggered to form bone-like tissues.

Mo Kang, UCLA

Researchers from the UCLA School of Dentistry investigating how stem cells can be used to regenerate dental tissue have discovered a way to produce cells with stem cell-like characteristics from the most common type of human skin cell in the epidermis.

These skin cells, called keratinocytes, form the outermost layer of skin and can be cultured from discarded skin tissues or biopsy specimens.

The findings, published in the Nov. 4 edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Biological Chemistry, may be beneficial for individuals with limited sources of endogenous stem cells.

The gene known as ∆Np63α is highly synthesized in regenerating cells of various tissues. The UCLA researchers found that introducing ∆Np63α into skin keratinocytes makes them lose their skin-cell characteristics and de-differentiate to resemble mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), undifferentiated cells that can self-renew and differentiate to yield specialized cells of various tissue types.

MSCs may serve as an internal repair system by replenishing cells needed for tissue regeneration and homeostasis and are currently being investigated for a number of regenerative therapeutics.

The conversion of keratinocytes into mesenchymal-like cells involves a process known as epithelial-mesenchymal transition. This is the first study to show that the gene ∆Np63α triggers this process in human skin keratinocytes and that the transformed cells acquire multipotent stem cell characteristics.

Since the skin cells transformed by ∆Np63α are induced to acquire the mesenchymal and stem cell characteristics, the research team named them “induced mesenchymal stem cells,” or iMSCs. Specifically, the researchers demonstrated that iMSCs can be triggered to form bone-like tissues or become fat tissues in a laboratory setting.

Dr. Mo K. Kang, the Jack A. Weichman Chair of Endodontics at the UCLA School of Dentistry and a member of the research team, said the finding had great significance for human health.

“Since iMSCs may be obtained by taking a small punch-biopsy of skin tissues from patients, these cells are an easily accessible, patient-specific source of stem cells, which can be used for regenerative purposes,” Kang said.

Stem cell-based therapies are currently being developed to treat degenerative conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, neuronal disorders and liver diseases. Many of these diseases are strongly associated with aging. Endogeneous MSCs found in various tissues, such as bone marrow, fat tissues and, in certain cases, dental tissues such as dental pulp, lose their regenerative potential during the aging process.

“It is possible that iMSCs retain their stem-cell characteristics even when derived from aged patients,” Kang said. “In such cases, this new approach may be useful, especially for geriatric patients or individuals with limited therapeutic value of their endogenous stem cells.”

“The UCLA School of Dentistry is very proud to be at the forefront of this research inquiry, which may facilitate future advances in regenerative dentistry and medicine,” said Dr. No-Hee Park, dean of the UCLA School of Dentistry and one of the study’s co-authors. “While the focus of this study was on the use of adult stem cells to regenerate dental tissue, including dental pulp and periodontal ligament, these findings could lead to further development of a variety of cell-based therapies.”

The research was funded in part by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research and the Jack A. Weichman Endowed Fund.

The UCLA School of Dentistry is dedicated to improving the oral health of the people of California, the nation and the world through its teaching, research, patient care and public service initiatives. The school provides education and training programs that develop leaders in dental education, research, the profession and the community; conducts research programs that generate new knowledge, promote oral health and investigate the cause, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of oral disease in an individualized disease-prevention and management model; and delivers patient-centered oral health care to the community and the state.