The UCSF School of Dentistry was recently awarded a grant for $1.4 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to continue and expand its successful outreach programs. The grant is a direct result of the School's history of successful recruitment and retention of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, including those from underrepresented minorities. The grant, paid over a three-year period, funds educational training programs targeting students from middle school to postgraduate education.

"This funding will help us focus more attention on middle and high school students in the city of San Francisco," said Charles J. Alexander, PhD, program director and Associate Dean for Student Affairs. "It will also allow us to establish a summer school environment with a focus on math and science for disadvantaged students who attend targeted high schools in the San Francisco Unified School District."

The compelling national need to improve access to general health and oral health care, cited in the Surgeon General's Report in 2000, makes it extremely important to increase dental career opportunities for underrepresented minorities, according to Alexander. In California, the shortage of minority and disadvantaged dental personnel is comparable to the shortage experienced in the U.S. as a whole. For example, there are approximately 24,500 practicing dentists in California. Less than 6% are from underrepresented minority groups, and most of these minority dentists are clustered in the urban areas of Southern California.

"There is a tremendous need to increase the number of dentists from underrepresented minority groups," Alexander said. "The training of health professionals from all segments of society is also essential for the delivery of culturally competent quality health care to all Americans."

Numerous Programs Supported

The grant will support a comprehensive approach to provide career awareness and academic enrichment to assist disadvantaged and underrepresented minority students compete for spots in dental schools. The program will collaborate with four San Francisco high schools (Philip and Sal Burton, Thurgood Marshal, Mission, and John O' Connell), four universities (UC-Berkeley, San Francisco State, University of San Francisco, and San Francisco City College) and a community-based organization (The San Francisco Boys and Girls Club). Each educational partner has committed resources and staff to assist in the implementation and execution of the program.

The program includes collaboration from each partner to provide recruitment activities, preliminary education during the academic year and summer, financial aid information, pre-entry activities, and counseling and mentoring services to develop a more competitive applicant pool of students. Currently the activities and programs of the UCSF Dental Careers Program impact more than 1,000 disadvantaged students annually. UCSF School of Dentistry's Undergraduate Mentorship and Post-Baccalaureate Programs have been cited as model programs. Both have been very successful with recruiting and enrolling more disadvantaged and underrepresented minorities into dental schools, including UCSF.

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Stanley Liu Presents at Cancer Prevention Research Conference

Third-year DDS student Stanley Liu presented his research on the phenomenon of cellular aging and its links to cancer- and age-related disease at the American Association for Cancer Research's 4th Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research conference in Baltimore from October 30 - November 2.

His presentation, Analysis of mammalian SIRT6, a homolog of the yeast Sir2 protein, during adipogenesis and calorie-restriction, is a summary of the work that Liu performed as a Howard Hughes Scholar, funded by both HHMI and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). At the conference, nearly 350 abstracts were presented that encompassed all of the sciences pertaining to cancer prevention - from linking the biology of the cancer process with its prevention and reversal in preinvasive stages to fostering translational research.

Here is a summary of Stanley Liu's presentation:

Much of present day science is interested in how we age, how we get fat, and how we get cancer. It turns out that all these could be related phenomena. A protein called the silent information regulator 2 (Sir2) has been shown to control longevity in primitive organisms like yeast and worms. In fact, an increase in Sir2 expression increases their lifespan. Humans have seven proteins (SIRT1 through 7) that significantly resemble Sir2. Assuming an evolutionarily conserved mechanism of aging, studying these Sir2-like human proteins should shed light on the molecular details of human cell aging.

It turns out that other scientists got pretty far looking at SIRT1 in mammals. SIRT1 is now recognized to control adipogenesis and fat distribution, in addition to interacting with p53, the important tumor suppressor protein. The amount of fat influences aging and age-related disorders. Low body fat, as a result of calorie-restriction, is an established process that results in longer lifespan in humans.

I took the work a step further, by looking closely at SIRT6. SIRT6 is localized to the nucleus, much like the yeast Sir2. Formerly, investigators looked at SIRT1 due to its genetic homology with Sir2. I went by what I could see, and that is, mammalian SIRT6 being in the same cellular localization as the yeast Sir2.

I found convincing evidence that SIRT6 plays a role in mammalian adipogenesis. Animals fed under high fat diets exhibited lower SIRT6 mRNA expression from multiple organs. As stem cells differentiated into fat cells, SIRT6 mRNA decreased. When human fibroblasts were grown in serum deprived of nutrients, SIRT6 mRNA expression increased. Could increased SIRT6 expression repress fat formation, lead to decreased incidence of age-related diseases, and contribute to a longer lifespan? That is a question which warrants further investigation based on these preliminary results.

By Stanley Liu

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Fore!

Associate Dean for Student Affairs Charles Alexander (left) with his trophy and fellow winning team members, following their victory at the Annual American Dental Education Association's Dean's Meeting golf tournament. With Dr. Alexander, from left to right, are: Dean Russ Gilpatrick (University of Tennessee), Igor Pesun (University of Minnesota), and Bruce Donoff, Dean of Harvard's School of Dental Medicine.

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