Research
Understanding the role of immune dysregulation due to diabetes mellitus in chronic oral infections needs to be explored. Such information is necessary to develop novel therapeutic approaches where specialized biomaterials can circumvent challenges in immunocompromised conditions to improve the overall treatment outcome of chronic oral infections.
Active Research Projects
- Immune Dysbiosis: Understand the role and mechanism of hyperglycemia and chronic oral infection in dendritic cells metabolism and function.
- Disease model: Establish chronic periodontitis or apical periodontitis in rodents with DM. Characterize the differences in immune cell population (dendritic cells and T cells) at the site of infection in such conditions.
- Immune-modulation: Develop and characterize tunable scaffolds/biomaterials with varying physical properties for immunomodulation. Therapeutic intervention based on translational studies using novel scaffolds to regulate healing response of chronic oral infections.
Confocal laser scanning microscope image of activated dendritic cells in normoglycemic and hyperglycemic conditions. Hyperglycemic condition resulted in highly activated DCs with increased dendrites and cell spread as well as expression of CD83 surface markers. The cells were fixed and stained with TRITC-conjugated phalloidin for actin, FITC-conjugated CD83 antibody, and DAPI for nucleus.