News
Congratulations to Dr Hardik Makkar
The Faculty would like to congratulate our PhD student, Dr Hardik Makkar, for winning the prestigious IADR Southeast Asian Division Hatton Award (Senior Category) at the recent 2022 International Association for Dental Research (IADR)/Asia Pacific Region (APR) General Session.
His project, ‘Gingival crevice-on-Chip to Biomimic Periodontal Host-Microbe Interaction’, focuses on mimicking the gingival sulcus to understand periodontal health and diseases in the lab. Gingival sulcus or crevice is the space where the gums and teeth meet. Recapitulating the features of the gingival sulcus will help to better understand the interaction between the bacteria and gum tissues in health and disease. This will also help pave way for the development of novel therapeutics to treat gum disease or periodontitis.
In the pursuit to recapitulate the unique and complex microenvironment of the gingival sulcus, Dr Makkar and team designed and developed a microfluidic organ-on-chip device (Gingival Crevice-on-Chip). The tiny device, (size of thumb drive) helps to mimic the structural and fluid transport properties of the connective tissue wall of the gingival crevice. This helps to biomimic the characteristics of the gingival crevicular fluid flow which helps in diluting and flushing out the bacteria and toxins leading to tissue homeostasis and protection. Such a unique microenvironment is not possible to mimic using conventional methods of culturing cells and microbes on dishes.
Dr Makkar observed that the chip aided the recapitulation of the functional and pathophysiological features of the crevicular microenvironment, which is a significant improvement over existing in vitro tools and models to understand oral host-microbe interaction.
His win was made possible with a support team and infrastructure that Dr Makkar is thankful for.
“I would like to thank my PhD advisor Dr Gopu Sriram, co-advisors Professor Chwee Teck Lim, Associate Professor Tan Kai Soo, collaborator Dr Ying Zhou, and the lab members for their mentorship, scientific contribution, and never-ending support. It was a privilege to be able to leverage on the cutting-edge infrastructure and funds from the Faculty of Dentistry and NUS iHealthtech,” shared Dr Makkar.
While his win has fuelled his motivation to take his research further, he is ultimately grateful for being able to share his work among his international peers.
“I feel extremely humbled to have had an opportunity to share our group’s research with some of the best minds in the field via the IADR General Session 2022,” concluded Dr Makkar.
Prof Chwee Teck Lim: http://ctlimlab.org/
Assoc Prof Tan Kai Soo: https://www.dentistry.nus.edu.sg/Faculty/staff/tanks.html
Dr. Gopu Sriram: https://www.dentistry.nus.edu.sg/.../staff/Sriram_Gopu.html
iHealthtech: https://ihealthtech.nus.edu.sg/