magazine - UCSF School of Dentistry - University of California, San ...

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many diseases, including cancer of
the mouth. I have seen many of these
patients die of this terrible disease
and this has provided me the impetus
to identify the causes of the disease,
and develop molecular markers that
will impact diagnosis and therapy.
Tell us a bit about your
research.
My research focuses on understanding
the biology of oral precancer
and cancer using modern molecular
methods, specifically the application
of molecular tests to routine diagnostic
patient material. We are trying to
identify molecular biomarkers that
may allow clinicians to predict which
patients are at risk of developing
oral cancer, and will allow for earlier
identification and treatment. We’re
also working on the development of
molecular tests that will better detect
microscopic cancer cells in regional
lymph nodes.
How does your research fit into
your longer-term career plans?
I work as a pathologist and see
patient biopsy material daily. It would
be nice, one day, not to have to ever
diagnose cancer again.
You might be one of the few
faculty members who knows
how to disassemble a car
engine.
That’s right. I financed my university
education as a motor-home
mechanic. This means that not only
can I take apart a motor-home engine,
I actually have first-hand experience
of what the word “double wide”
really means.
Janice Lee
Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
Janice Lee, an Assistant
Professor of Clinical Oral and
Maxillofacial Surgery, earned
her DDS degree at UCLA, her
MD at Harvard and then added
an MS at UCLA. She did a residency
in oral and maxillofacial
Richard Jordan, Associate Professor and Chair, division of Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology
and Oral Radiology.
surgery at Massachusetts
General Hospital and Harvard,
followed by a two-year
fellowship in Craniofacial and
Skeletal Diseases at the NIH
in Bethesda, Md.
What does your oral surgery
research entail?
I’m working on bone regeneration.
It’s exciting because not many people
are doing it. No one else has studied
rib regeneration to see if we can
influence other parts of the body to
regenerate like the rib, where the
bone actually grows back. I am
looking at the characteristics of
stem cells from the ribs of humans
and comparing them to the
regeneration we see on quantitative
CT (computerized tomography),
to figure out what it is about the rib
that allows it to grow, a characteristic
that doesn’t typically happen in any
other bone in the body.
What is the benefit of
regeneration over traditional
bone-grafting approaches?
With large bone irregularities or
deficiencies in the head and neck —
those caused by a congenital
anomaly, such as hemifacial
microsomia, or bone loss through
trauma or tumor removal — no
matter how long you wait, the
human body won’t fill in that space.
Surgeons have to use bone from
another area of the body, most commonly
the hip and rib, to reconstruct
defects in the craniofacial skeleton.
You’re effectively robbing from
Peter to pay Paul in that case. No
one has yet found a way to fix the
defects other than to take from these
sites. When you take bones from
other areas of the body, you create a
second surgical site and, with it, a
new defect. This can be particularly
problematic in the elderly, who often
naturally develop complications in the
hip area later in life or in children who
naturally have smaller bones and
fewer harvesting sites. Through this
research, I am studying areas of the
body that regenerate on their own
without any assistance — the rib and,
occasionally, the pediatric mandible.
I’m looking at what we can do to the
mandible to make it “think” that it too
can form bone. Though growing a
mandible from a few stem cells
seems far into the future, it is an
exciting area of research and one that
can make a big difference in patient
care and the way we will practice in
the future. I’m also interested in
developing an animal model to further
study this ability to grow bone.