Oral Diseases
The Oral Diseases group investigates the causes, diagnostic markers, pathogenesis and potential treatments of a variety of pathological conditions that affect the oral tissues, by means of the state of the art methods, including ‘wet lab’ molecular techniques, DNA landscapes, genome wide NGS techniques, 3D tissue cultures, synchrotron beam analysis and intelligent (AI) microscopy techniques.
Professor Gabriel Landini
Principal Investigator & Group Lead
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Dr Malgorzata Wiench
Principal Investigator & Group Lead
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Dr Dick Shelton
Principal Investigator
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Our research group
Our group is involved in a number of innovative research activities involving diseases of the oral and maxillofacial regions. Among those:
- Quantitative morphometrical descriptors of oral cancer, cancer invasion.
- Histological imaging and intelligent microscopy for diagnostic purposes.
- Epigenetic regulation in the development and treatment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma
- Nanostructure of Dental Caries (collaborations with Oxford & Surrey Universities)
- Immunopathology of the oral mucosa: Oral Lichen Planus and Behcet’s disease
- Interactions between epithelial cells and titanium products
Tissue architectural segmentation.
DNA analysis in oral cancer.
- STFC-CLF-Octopus, 2020. Landini G, Wongviriya A, Shelton, Candeo A, Cooper PR, Milward M.Characterisation of oral cancer invasion patterns using light sheet imaging of spheroid cultures.
- GSK/ODRT, 2019. Perks AC, Landini G, Shelton RM, Cooper PR. Differential expression of Bmi1 and PARP1 in reticular, erosive and atrophic oral lichen planus.
- EPSRC, 2016. Korsunsky A, Sui T (Oxford), Landini G, Shelton RM (Birmingham). Tackling human dental caries by multi-modal correlative microscopy and multi-physics modelling.
- EPSRC, 2015. Landini G, Randell DA, Mehanna H, Galton A. Novel context-based segmentation algorithms for intelligent microscopy.
- FP7-PEOPLE-CIG methDRE. Wiench M. Distal regulatory elements in cancer progression and treatment: focus on DNA methylation and hydroxymethylation
- Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, 2017. Khan Z, Landini G, Shelton RM. Molecular and cellular characterisation of Oral Lichen Planus.
- Royal College Of Surgeons of Edinburgh, 2015. Waring SM, Landini G. Prognostic models of oral cancer outcome based on morphological invasiveness.
Recent and selected publications
- Gleneadie HJ, Baker A, Batis N, Bryant J, Jiang Y, Clokie SJH, Mehanna H, Garcia P, Gendoo DMA, Roberts S, Burley M, Molinolo AA, Gutkind JS, Scheven BA, Cooper PR, Parish JL, Khanim FL, Wiench M. The anti-tumour activity of DNA methylation inhibitor 5-aza-2’-deoxycytidine is enhanced by the common analgesic paracetamol through induction of oxidative stress. Cancer Letters 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2020.12.029
- Harper RA, Shelton RM, James J, Salvati E, Besnard C, Korsunsky A, Landini G. Acid-induced demineralisation of enamel as a function of time and pH. Acta Biomaterialia 2020, doi:10.1016/j.actbio.2020.04.045.
- Landini G, Galton A, Randell D, Fouad S. Novel applications of Discrete Mereotopology to Mathematical Morphology. Signal Processing: Image communication 76: 109-117, 2019. doi: 10.1016/j.image.2019.04.018
- Flight R, Landini G, Styles I, Shelton RM, Milward MR, Cooper PR. Automated non-invasive cell counting in phase contrast microscopy with automated image analysis parameter selection. Journal of Microscopy 271(3):345-354, 2018. doi:10.1111/jmi.12726.
- Abdulkareem AA, Shelton RM, Landini G, Cooper PR, Milward MR. Periodontal pathogens promote epithelial mesenchymal transition in oral squamous cell carcinoma cells in vitro. Cell Adhesion and Migration 12(2): 127-137, 2018. doi: 10.1080/19336918.2017.1322253
- Fouad S. Randell DA, Galton A, Mehanna H, Landini G. Unsupervised morphological segmentation of of tissue compartments in histopathological images. PLoS ONE 12(11): 2017, e0188717.
PI(s): Landini, Wiench, Shelton, Scheven, Waring, Poveda, Batt, Milward
Postdocs: Robert Harper
Trainees: Alexandra Perks
Students: Adjabhak Wongviriya, Satvir Shoker, Ben Hewitt, Vanessa Pereyra (UdelaR)
External collaborators: Shereen Fouad (Birmingham City University), Alexander Korsunsky (Oxford Univeristy), Tan Sui (University of Surrey), Hisham Mehanna (Cancer Studies), Joanna Parish (ICGS), Ronell Bologna (UdelaR)