The Center for Children's Oral Health Research (COHR)

Is an interdisciplinary, cross-campus, and international initiative focused on translational research to improve children’s oral health and well-being. We focus on how genetic and environmental factors affect tooth development and oral diseases, and how these changes can be biomarkers for systemic changes affecting organ systems.

Our work

Our work includes investigating how environmental factors such as stress, early life adversity, and fluoride affect enamel mineralization. These environmental factors, along with genetic alterations resulting in amelogenesis imperfect, result in hypomineralization of tooth enamel and dentin, which can affect the resistance of teeth to dental caries. Dental caries results from changes in the oral microbiome, and we are investigating how alterations in the oral microbiome, negatively impact health outcomes, including bloodstream infection in medically compromised pediatric transplant recipients.