Overview

SOMI is an integrated research platform focusing on studies exploring the oral microbiome, oral biofilms, genetics and salivary biomarkers to understand the burden of oral diseases and to untangle the increasingly complex oral-systemic associations.

SOMI aims to:

Determine the causes of oral diseases and unravel the mechanisms behind the oral-systemic associations
Explore the healthy and dysbiotic oral microbiome associated with oral and systemic diseases
Develop novel therapeutics that modulate the oral and systemic conditions towards health
Develop point-of-care diagnostics for oral and systemic diseases

Background

Oral chronic diseases result from an imbalanced inflammatory response to different local and systemic causes. The SOMI research platform has been established to understand the pathobiology of oral diseases and the link between oral and systemic conditions by utilizing multi-OMICS (genomics, proteomics and metabolomics) analysis and health-related and sociodemographic data. The high diversity of clinical cases at NDCS and SingHealth and the multitude of population-based cohorts in Singapore make SOMI strategically well-positioned to recruit the samples required for these studies.

At SOMI, a multidisciplinary team of dental clinicians, dental clinician-scientists and platform experts works together to facilitate the identification of relevant clinical problems, investigation of the underlying pathogenesis mechanisms, development of innovative solutions and translation of these innovations into clinical practice.

Key Research Areas

Oral Microbiome	Oral Biofilms	Salivary Biomarkers	Genetics
Pathobiology of oral diseases Link with systemic diseases	Anti-biofilm agents and devices Microbiome-modulation therapy	Diagnostic and prognostic salivary biomarkers for oral and systemic diseases	Genetic and epigenetic modifications in oral diseases

Core Research Platforms

SOMI has three core research platforms to support our key research areas – technical, diagnostic and therapeutic.

Technical	Metagenomics Metaproteomics Transcriptomics Proteomics Metabolomics Epigenomics
Diagnostic	Health vs disease-specific microbial signatures In vitro, ex vivo screening models Point-of-care devices
Therapeutic	Microbiome and inflammation modulation therapy Small-molecule based drug discovery Anti-biofilm devices