Wins 2007 Norton M. Ross Award
for Excellence in Clinical Research
Adapted from an article that originally appeared in the ADA News.
'We're changing the face of dentistry'
Ross award winner aims research at clinical practice
By Jennifer Garvin
San Francisco—John Featherstone, Ph.D., likes to describe his career as a "series of happy accidents."
Years ago, a chance meeting with a former professor led to an opportunity to participate in a dental decay project. Little did he know, the subject would become his life's work.
A pioneering researcher on dental caries and caries-inhibitory mechanisms, Dr. Featherstone dreams of a day when he discovers the chemical reaction that triggers decay and reverses it. For more than three decades, he has studied myriad aspects of cariology including salivary dysfunction, de- and remineralization of dental hard tissues, fluoride mechanisms of action and the role of carbonate in the apatite structure. His clinical trials have changed the curriculum of dental schools across the country.
For these efforts, he is the 2007 winner of the Norton M. Ross Award for excellence in clinical research. Dr. Ross was a dentist and pharmacologist who contributed significantly to oral medicine and dental clinical research.
Dr. Featherstone, who called Dr. Ross a personal friend, said this relationship makes winning this particular award very special.
"It's an honor," he said. "Dr. Ross was always interesting to be with. He was fun to talk science with as well as life in general. It means a lot to me because of the recognition by the profession for the research and its implications for changing the way that we do dentistry."
Added Dr. James Bramson, ADA executive director, "Dr. Featherstone has distinguished himself for years and it is such an honor to partner with Johnson & Johnson to recognize him in this special way."
A professor at the University of California San Francisco School of Dentistry, Dr. Featherstone arrived at the school in 1995 excited about research and teaching, and with his administrative experience was soon recruited to serve as chair the Department of Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences (PRDS).
A native of New Zealand, Dr. Featherstone earned a bachelor of science degree at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and later a master of science at the University of Manchester in England.
He said he "fell into dentistry" when he was thinking about pursuing a Ph.D. in England. He'd studied math and chemistry and knew he wanted to work in the health sciences field, but it wasn't until a fateful encounter with an old New Zealand professor that he ever considered dental research a possibility. Back to Wellington he went.
"I never realized it would become the rest of my life," he said. "My passion is doing lab-supported clinical work and getting it to the real world."
Dr. Featherstone later earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at Victoria.
He has called the United States home since 1980, when he joined the faculty at the Eastman Dental Center in Rochester, N.Y.
He also has worked in the pharmaceutical and health-related industries. Because of that, he said he understands how both industry and academia think. It's one of the reasons he became friends with Dr. Ross.
His research always has this constant: what relevance is this to clinical practice? When asked to name his proudest achievement, he says he can't single out any one thing—just that he feels a "deep satisfaction" that he has "succeeded in transferring lab work into clinical relevance so that it can be put into practice."
He's had the same dream for 30 years—to reverse dental caries—and said he is seeing that dream realized now.
"We're changing the face of dentistry," he said of his fellow researchers.
Dr. Featherstone was one of the first academics to work with lasers in dentistry. In the beginning, he said others called it "nonsense" but he stuck with it, eventually earning a National Institutes of Health grant. Dr. Featherstone also is the editor of the Journal of Laser Dentistry.
His NIH-funded clinical trial at UCSF, "Caries Management by Risk Assessment," (CAMBRA) showed that high-risk adults can have a markedly lower caries incidence by altering the balance between caries pathological factors and caries protective factors with chemical therapy.
In 2003, he and Dr. Douglas Young expanded the teachings of that trial to form a "CAMBRA coalition" to include all of the West Coast dental schools as well as Arizona and Nevada. The project expanded to include the Central region in 2006 and the East Coast earlier this year. Dr. Featherstone co-chairs the West Coast program.
All of the programs entail a practice of dental schools swapping and exchanging information every year and putting it into teaching and clinical practice.
A self-described ocean and mountain person, he frequently visits Lake Tahoe and Squaw Valley, Calif., for recreation. He has family in New Zealand, where he tries to visit every two or three years.
As the 2007 Norton M. Ross award winner, Dr. Featherstone will receive a plaque and $5,000 check at an ADA Board of Trustees dinner in September in Chicago. The Ross award recognizes a significant contribution in clinical investigation that has advanced the diagnosis, treatment and/or prevention of craniofacial-oral-dental diseases. The award is sponsored by the ADA through the ADA Foundation, with support of Johnson & Johnson.
