Dental plaque multi-omics dissection for the exploration of novel targets in translational biology

The latest World Health Organization (WHO) reports revealed that around half of the world population is affected by oral diseases, among these, dental caries and periodontal diseases (PD) covering the most prevalent ones. Interestingly, recent studies revealed that the oral microbiota is correlated with other systemic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), or Alzheimer's disease. Although -omics based technologies have provided a wealth of information on these systemic diseases by analysis of biopsies or biological fluids from patients with such systemic diseases, few studies have addressed such correlations by analyzing the dental plaque microbiota variability, particularly from a multi-omics perspective.
  Here we would like to dissect the clinically observed association between PD and CVDs from a multi-omics-based perspective. We plan to collect samples from healthy subjects, PD confirmed patients and subjects with PD and CVDs to assess the dental plaque microbiota by 16S sequencing and metaproteomic analysis. The data will be enriched by lipidomics and analysis of their cytokine inflammatory profile. The obtained results will provide essential details about the mechanisms explaining such correlations and will open new opportunities to provide patients-specific treatment options.